Foundation Repair for Sticking Doors: Run the Pattern Test Before You Pay Anyone

Why a moving foundation shows up at the doors first

A door only works because two rectangles agree with each other. When a slab corner settles even a quarter inch, the wall above leans with it and every door frame in that wall racks — the opening becomes a slight parallelogram, squeezing one top corner. The door hasn't changed at all; its hole has. That's why foundation-stuck doors bind at a corner while humidity-swollen doors rub along a whole edge, and why the doors near a settling corner act up as a group. The full geometry, with diagrams and the field shortcuts our inspectors use, is in our deep-dive: why doors stick when a foundation moves.

What the doors say about which way the house is moving

Once the pattern test points to movement, the location of the sticky doors becomes a map. Doors near exterior corners feel perimeter settlement first — especially south- and west-facing corners, which take the most drought stress on Central Texas clay. Interior doors along the center of the house acting up while the corner doors stay fine suggests interior movement instead, which is rarer and often has water in the story — frequently an under-slab plumbing leak heaving the middle of the slab. And the walls corroborate what the doors report: diagonal cracks rising from door-frame corners are the drywall's version of the same racking — we've written up what cracks above doors and windows mean if your walls are talking too.

When it's humidity, not the foundation

Here's the part a repair company is supposed to say out loud: plenty of sticking doors are just weather. Wood swells in humid months. One door, rubbing along its full edge, in July, anywhere in the house — plane it, or wait for fall and it will likely free itself. A door that stuck once and then “fixed itself” after rain is worth noting (that can be clay moisture cycling), but a single seasonal sticker is not a foundation emergency, and nobody should sell you piers off the back of one. If the pattern is seasonal and edge-wise, our honest advice is a $6 pack of sandpaper, not a repair scope.

Measure, don't guess: what the free inspection adds

The pattern test tells you whether to measure; the free inspection does the measuring. An inspector checks each reported door — the gap wedge, the strike plate, the frame corners — and runs a 40-point floor elevation survey reading the slab to a tenth of an inch. If the sticky doors map to a genuine low spot, you'll see it on the color-coded elevation map, with a firm scope and price to fix the cause. If they don't, you get “no repair needed” in writing and a dated baseline to re-check against, also free. The visit takes 60–90 minutes and there's no obligation either way.

If it is the foundation: what the fix looks like

When the map confirms settlement under the door cluster, the repair is piers at the low sections — slab foundation repair priced by pier count, about $600–$1,000 per pier, with a settled corner (4–6 piers) typically landing around $2,500–$6,000. As the lift brings the frames back toward square, the doors usually start latching again — they were never the problem, just the messenger. The cost guide has the full math. On pier-and-beam homes the same symptom traces to crawlspace framing instead, and that repair is usually friendlier money.