How To Fix Your Sticky Sliding Glass Door

Sliding doors can sometimes be very difficult to open. Some members of a household, such as young children, often will find it nearly impossible to get a sliding glass door to budge. If you've decided it's time to rectify the problem, here are a few simple tips that can help you get your door to operate smoothly. These tips will also allow you to fix your door without wasting a lot of money.

What You Will Need

• Vacuum
• Wire Brush or Toothbrush
• Steak knife
• Screwdrivers (Flat and Phillips)
• Lubricant (silicone based)

Step 1. Any standard glass sliding door will have a track. Tracks are door frames that basically guide your door's movement and provide a slot for the door's wheels to sit in. Over the course of time, a door's track will accumulate grime and dirt. This buildup will slow down a door's action considerably. So, it's important to clean out a track using a wire brush or a toothbrush. If the toothbrush doesn't work, switch over to the wire brush. The wire brush is the same kind you might use to clean golf clubs. After you've finished cleaning dirt out of the track completely, use your vacuum to pick up the dirt.

Step 2. Use either a lubricant (silicone based) or an oil-based water-displacing spray on your entire track. You can find both of these products in most home improvement stores. Make certain to clean up any of the spray that ends up on your floor. Otherwise, you'll have a pretty slippery surface.

Step 3. Your sliding glass door should have adjustable rollers which allow the door to move along the track. Holes on the door conceal the roller's adjusting screws. Some doors have plastic plugs that cover these holes. Use a steak knife in order to pry loose these plugs. Remember that your door has two roller sets on opposite sides of the door.

Step 4. Use a screwdriver (Phillips head) to gently turn the roller's screw to adjust it. This screw allows you to move the height of the roller up and down. This can make your door's height change by about a 1/4 of an inch. Experiment with the door's roller screws to determine if your door is gliding better at a higher or lower height. If you need to replace the screws or take them out, make sure you have a bag on hand so they don't get lost. Lastly, it's a good idea to use lubricant inside the screw's opening. This can help the door's rollers operate more smoothly.