The leaf is usually innocent
When a door binds in the wet season, sticks at the top corner, or swings open by itself, the frame is at fault far more often than the leaf. Frames get fitted quickly, by whoever is on site that afternoon, into openings that are rarely square. Here is the order our installers work in, and why each step exists.
1. Check the opening before anything else
Measure the structural opening at the head, the middle and the floor, then measure both diagonals. If the diagonals differ by more than about 5mm, the opening is out of square and you need to decide now whether the frame follows the wall or follows plumb. It cannot do both. We follow plumb and make up the difference with the architrave, because a door that hangs true and a skirting line that runs 4mm off is a compromise nobody notices, and the reverse is one everybody does.
2. Keep the frame off the wet screed
Raw end grain sitting in a fresh screed will wick water for months and later become the entry point for termites. Either sit the jamb on a hardwood or stone plinth block, or hold it 10mm clear and pack the gap with a non-absorbent shim. On ground floor openings we do both.
3. Plumb the hinge jamb first, and only the hinge jamb
The hinge side carries the door. Get it plumb in both planes - front to back as well as side to side - and fix it before touching the other side. A hinge jamb that leans back a couple of degrees is what makes a door swing open on its own, and no amount of adjusting the strike will cure it.
4. Shim behind every fixing
Every screw that pulls a jamb toward a wall without a shim behind it bows the jamb inward, and a bowed jamb pinches the leaf. Shim at each hinge position and at the strike, then drive the fixing until it is snug rather than until the driver clutches out.
5. Set the head, then the strike jamb, to the leaf
Use the actual leaf, not the tape measure. Hold it in the opening on packers with the correct gap - we work to 3mm at the sides and head, 8mm at the floor for tiled rooms - and set the strike jamb to that. Frames fitted to a nominal dimension and doors hung a week later are where the 1mm-here-2mm-there gaps come from.
6. Hang, then check the reveal in four places
Close the leaf and look at the gap at the top of the hinge side, the top of the strike side, the middle and the bottom. All four should read the same. If the gap tapers, the hinge jamb is not plumb and the correct fix is to reset the jamb, not to plane the leaf. Planing hides the problem for a season and then the paint fails on the raw edge.
7. Seal the edges, including the top
The top edge of a door is the one nobody finishes, and it is the one that drinks moisture from the ceiling void every wet season. Two coats on all six surfaces before the door is hung, no exceptions. This single habit prevents most of the seasonal binding people accept as normal.
If it already binds
Before anything gets planed, check the hinges for a loose screw and the jamb for a bow, and see whether the binding follows the weather. A door that only sticks in November is telling you it was sealed on five faces instead of six. That is a half-day fix with a brush, not a job for a plane.
