We repair front, entry and exterior residential doors that stick, let in drafts, won’t lock or have been damaged, across Ottawa and the Ottawa Valley, with same-day emergency repair, flat-rate quotes and a written parts and labour warranty.
Sagging, drafty, or damaged front entries repaired, realigned, and reinforced.
A front door is opened and closed many times a day, takes the full force of wind, sun and winter weather, and usually carries the main security hardware on the house: the deadbolt, handleset and sometimes a smart lock. That hardware is only as effective as the frame it’s installed in and the way the door is hung. At Fix My Door Now Ottawa, front door repair is the work we’re called for most often, and same-day emergency repair is available when a front door won’t lock or close.
Front doors take Ottawa weather and daily traffic — we keep them sealing and locking.
We provide front door repair, entry door repair and exterior door repair for homes. If your front entry rubs, sags, won’t latch, leaks cold air, or has frame or hardware damage that isn’t an emergency break-in, we handle that repair. If the door needs replacing, see front door installation; for other types of doors, see Ottawa door repair.
Most calls here are non-emergency wear-and-tear on a front or side exterior entry — the door still closes, but not easily, or it closes but no longer seals or locks properly. In a single visit we assess alignment, hinges, hardware, the frame, and every seal so one repair fixes the cause instead of the symptom.
A front door that requires force to open or close is the most common complaint we hear, and it has several distinct causes that we assess separately. Seasonal swelling in wood doors is the most obvious — Ottawa summers expand wood doors noticeably, and a door that was perfect in March can stick solidly in August. But sticking also results from hinge loosening that allows the door to sag and bind at the top latch corner, from frame movement that has narrowed the clearance at a specific point, and from a door that has never been properly fitted and has always required some effort. We identify which it is and repair it at the source — not by planing the door aggressively and leaving gaps that matter in winter, but by restoring the geometry that makes the door close freely and seal properly at the same time.
The lock on a front door is usually one of the most-used locks in the house. Daily use and Ottawa’s winter temperature cycling — which expands and contracts the door relative to the frame — produce wear and alignment changes that accumulate into a lock that requires lifting the handle, pushing the door, or significant key force to engage. We service, adjust and replace front door deadbolts and handle sets. Where the strike is weak or the screws only reach the jamb, we fit a reinforced strike plate and longer screws into the framing so the lock works properly and holds. Lock repair covers deadbolts, handle sets and strike upgrades on the same visit.
Front door frames are vulnerable in a specific way that interior frames aren’t: they’re the target of break-in attempts. A front door frame that has been kicked, crowbarred, or otherwise attacked — even unsuccessfully — has damage behind the casing that isn’t visible without removing the trim. We assess front door frames for structural integrity, repair and reinforce the jamb at the strike, and install hardware that makes the repaired door more resistant to the next attempt than it was to the one that already happened. Door frame repair rebuilds and reinforces the jamb at the strike so the repaired door holds up better next time. Soft, dark, or crumbling wood at the base of an exterior jamb is a different failure — moisture and rot — and for that, see rotting door frame repair.
A drafty front door is particularly noticeable because the front entry hall is usually the first space you pass through when coming inside from a cold Ottawa day — so if it is noticeably colder than the rest of the house, you feel it every time you come in. We replace front door weatherstripping, door sweeps, and threshold seals, check the door’s alignment to ensure it’s closing against the full perimeter of the seal, and re-caulk the exterior frame perimeter where gap and air bypass paths have opened up. A properly sealed front entry door makes an immediate and noticeable difference in how the front hall feels. Fresh weatherstripping around the jamb and threshold is usually what stops that draft.
Fresh strike-side weatherstripping on a residential entry after jamb reinforcement — a Ottawa weatherseal repair.
The bottom of a front entry is where many Ottawa drafts actually start — a sweep that no longer rides the sill, a threshold that has settled or rotted, or a slab that sags until it binds on the floor every time you close it. We adjust, rebuild, or replace thresholds and sills, set sweeps to the correct height, and re-hang the door so it clears the sill in summer and still seals in winter. That bottom-edge work is threshold and sill repair.
Residential entry hardware — handlesets, deadbolts, multipoint hooks, hinge pins, door viewers, and mail slots — has to survive daily use and Ottawa’s freeze-thaw cycles. We service and upgrade exterior door hardware so the door closes, locks, and seals as one system. Handles and closers that overlap with hinge work fall under hinge and hardware repair page.
Front door giving you trouble right now? Call 613-265-3667 for same-day front entry repair across Ottawa & the Valley — or request a free quote online.
Many Ottawa front entry doors incorporate glass — half-lite or full-lite glass panels in the door itself, decorative glass insets, or flanking sidelites. Cracked or fogged glass in a front entry door is both an aesthetic problem and an energy performance failure. We replace front door glass panels and sidelites, matching the original glass specification and meeting the tempered safety glass requirements that apply to glazing in door locations. See broken glass repair.
Front doors are heavy — a solid wood or fibreglass entry door with a glass panel can weigh 40 to 60 kilograms — and the hinges that carry that weight cycle thousands of times a year. We see more hinge wear on front entry doors than on any other door type, precisely because they’re the heaviest and most frequently used. We replace worn hinges with commercial-grade units correctly sized for the door weight, repair stripped hinge screw holes properly, and re-hang the door so it sits square and swings freely. See our hinges and hardware page.
Most residential entry door problems are repairs — alignment, hinges, hardware, seals, frame work at the strike, or a failed glass insert. Replacement is the right call when the slab is warped or rotted beyond correction, the frame has failed structurally, or the door’s security and energy performance cannot be restored for a sensible cost. Water-damaged exterior doors often need the sill and jamb rebuilt first, then a new unit if the leaf itself has failed.
We’ll explain both options and give you a flat-rate quote for each. See also: door repair vs replacement in Ottawa.
These recent Ottawa jobs show the kind of residential front and exterior entry work we do:
Front doors in Ottawa vary significantly by neighbourhood and era. Century homes in the Glebe, Sandy Hill, and Old Ottawa South have original or early-replacement doors in non-standard sizes with period-appropriate details that require care and often custom sourcing. Postwar bungalows in Nepean and Westboro have simpler doors that have now been through seventy winters. Newer construction in Barrhaven, Kanata, and Orléans has builder-grade hardware and frames that are approaching the end of their initial service life. We work across all of these contexts and approach each with the knowledge of what that specific type of door and frame is likely to need.
If the door swings and seals correctly but you still cannot get in because of a stuck cylinder, broken key or lock that will not turn, residential locksmith service in Ottawa from Can-Lock Security is the clearer path for that lock-only problem.
Related front-door repairs we also handle:
Need an entry specialist closer to home? These local pages cover the same flat-rate work:
A front door problem is often a draft or a security question in disguise. These guides go deeper:
Real door repairs, installations, and security work completed by our Ottawa and Ottawa Valley team.
Tell us what’s wrong and we’ll give you a free, flat-rate quote.
We’ll give you a flat-rate quote before starting, and our repairs are backed by a written parts and labour warranty.
Other door services we provide in Front Door.
Stiff deadbolts, worn handlesets and old hardware serviced or upgraded.
Door frame repair in Ottawa — we fix cracked, split, rotted and kicked-in frames for homes and businesses.
Drafty front entry?
Door threshold and sill repair in Ottawa — drafty, leaking, worn and rotted thresholds, sill pans and sweeps fixed.
Same-day front door repair across Ottawa & the Valley — one visit, everything assessed and fixed.
