How to fix misaligned RV cabinet doors

By Chris Dougherty
Chris Dougherty is a certified RV technician. Here is a letter from a reader about misaligned RV cabinet doors that he received while he was serving as RVtravel.com’s technical editor.

Dear Chris,
We own a 2011 Forest River Sunseeker 3120 with cherry wood cabinets, and have found the one door on the closet is not closing tight at the bottom. The door closes tight at the top. Is there a way to fix this problem? —Gary

Dear Gary,
Thanks for writing in. The answer to your question is yes, the door or door jamb can be adjusted, but the key to determining the fix is to first find the problem.

Doors and door jambs not meeting all the way around can be due to a couple of things, including a warped door, a wrongly mounted door, a wall that’s not plumb, etc. The way I like to do this is to start by examining how the door operates in relation to the wall, and check all the pieces to make sure nothing has come loose or is broken.

If all that seems OK, I check the door slab to see if it’s warped. Sometimes its easier to remove the door and lay it on a flat surface to determine this, although the way most doors are made today, warping is minimized or eliminated.

Next, if the door itself is OK, measure the walls of the closet to make sure they’re square. It’s not unheard of to find that the wall on one side of a doorway isn’t in line with the other side. This can be because the wall fastener failed, or because the wall was secured improperly. If this is the case, the wall has to be opened up and moved to the correct position and re-secured.

In addition to the above, other things to check are: 1) The alignment and positioning of the hinges; 2) Check to see if the wall is bowed in, as I’ve seen them bowed in the middle; and 3) See if something is hitting the door when it closes, causing it to be bowed out.

If the door slab has warped, a replacement can often be obtained from a surplus warehouse, or from your original dealer.

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