Making Doors Quieter - Stop Banging of Doors
My kids have no clue how to close their bedroom doors quietly. It is a problem because we have just instituted a daily "quiet time" which allows me to get the baby down for a nap and give myself a sanity break (stay at home mom, recently started home schooling). The older kids are adjusting to quiet time, and have troubles just staying put, so they keep opening the doors to see what's going out in the hallway, then quickly closing them again - BANG!
So I am on the search for a remedy for loud closing doors.
Our doors are the typical hollow-core variety, circa 1986. So far this is what I've come up with for solutions to help the doors close more quietly:
1) My son's door is not closing properly - it sticks so no matter what you usually end up banging it when you close it, even if trying to be careful, because you have to tug it shut. The solution to this is either an adjustment to the hinges (if it's not hanging straight) or possibly planing it down a tad if it has swollen up too much to fit the opening properly.
2) As for my daughter's room, the door closes just fine. One idea I found on yahoo was to place felt adhesive pads in the jam. I suppose this would work if you placed it along the narrow stop piece that the door closes against. They would have to be pretty flat so as not to cause problems with the door latching.
3) The same person on yahoo suggested rugs in the hall to deaden the overall carrying properties of the sounds. I agree, this would help, not only with the noise from the doors, but from the claws of our furry white beast (part-bichon dog with high energy) who keeps running back and forth between rooms.
4) The self-closing hydrolic type door-closing device was suggested too. I don't know about putting those on bedroom doors. May effect resale value!
5) The one saving grace I have going for me right now - an in-room humidifier running whenever the baby is sleeping. Yes, in the middle of July we run our humidifier at night and at naps, absolutely. We have AC so it's not like the humidity gets oppressive (except maybe after someone takes a shower or bath), and the sound of it (it certainly is not quiet) is a very effective white noise to help drown out the various cacaphony coming from the other children's rooms.
If you have any ideas about making doors close more quietly, please let me know. It would be heavenly to silence the banging and slamming of my kids' bedroom doors.
