Hi I have some water damage to my bathroom doors on the bottom that has caused it to curl upwards. I was wondering if I could repair them as it is only a few cm's of damage or if I need to replace the entire doors. I'm renting and have a rental inspection coming up soon.
Thanks heaps.
Dear Monique,
The first question that comes to mind is why is the door being affected by water? This could be caused by:
• poor fitting where the door is too close to the floor and absorbing water through capillary attraction
• poor design, where water is splashing onto the door
• accidents of overflowing.
Of the three it would be reasonable to assume that you are entirely responsible for the third reason but not necessarily so for the first two.
I can confidently assume that because the door is peeling that it is either a hollow core door or a solid core door (less likely) and both would be covered with an exterior skin of plywood. The ply is therefore peeling away from the supporting frame and whilst ever it continues to get wet it will continue to deteriorate.
Therefore the extent of the damage would determine what remedial action is needed. Personally I would be more concerned about fixing the source of the problem before anything else.
By this I mean that if the problem were the first dot point above, then cutting 20 mm (2cm) off the bottom of the door would resolve the issue of ongoing moisture and in the process could solve the damaged appearance.
Similarly if the second dot point is the problem then no amount of remedial work will fix it because even if you replace the door it too will eventually in time suffer the same failure.
So the options available in order of cost and extent of damage are:
• clean up the door and repaint/recoat the door, or;
• cut the bottom off the door, or;
• put a metal plate across the bottom 300 mm of the door on both sides, or;
• replace the door.
If you are really concerned, and unable to do the work yourself contact a tradesperson to come and look at it for you.
I hope this is of some use.
Kind regards,
Mike