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PSA: I fixed my squeaky apartment door with a $3 bar of soap and I feel dumb for waiting 8 months
My bedroom door in my Cincinnati apartment has been screaming since January. My landlord said he would send someone but never did. Last Saturday I rubbed a dry bar of Ivory soap along the top and bottom of the hinge edge where the wood was rubbing the frame. The squeak stopped completely and it's been quiet for 6 days now. Has anyone else fixed something annoying with a thing they already had in the house?
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ellis.faith21d ago
I had the same squeak in my last place on Vine Street and the thing that finally worked was less about the soap and more about where the noise was coming from. If the squeak was the wood rubbing the frame like yours, soap is perfect because it leaves a dry film that stays put. But if the sound was coming from inside the hinge pin itself, soap wears off in a couple weeks and the squeak comes back. Next time it starts up, pull the hinge pin out and look at it. If it's shiny and worn, the pin is grinding in the metal and you need a thicker grease, not soap. The fact that yours has been quiet for 6 days tells me you found the right spot, so just keep an eye on it.
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the_lee21d ago
Watched my neighbor struggle with the same squeaky door for months and he finally just took it off the hinges and sprayed WD40 everywhere, which worked for about two days and then made it worse somehow. Reading what @ellis.faith said about the hinge pin makes me realize I probably got lucky since my noise was the wood rubbing and not the pin grinding. Honestly I felt so dumb standing there with a bar of soap like I was washing my door instead of fixing it. Six days of quiet beats eight months of listening to that screech every time I got up to pee at night. Guess the real lesson is to actually look at where the sound is coming from before you start rubbing stuff on things.
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