Silence squeaking door hinges

If you had houseguests over the holidays, you probably learned a few things. Maybe your list of insights is similar to mine:

1. When you don't have a single set of matching pillowcases, simply pile additional pillows on the guest bed on the theory that two mismatched pillowcases look tacky, whereas five look 'arty'.
2. The steam from a kettle left boiling for 25 minutes while you're recounting an amusing anecdote to your guests can remove stubborn stains from the underside of kitchen cabinets, and even stubborn paint.
3. A laundry load of wet table linen left sitting in the washing machine since the day before the guests arrived, is unlikely to smell 'meadow-fresh' when hastily dried and set on the table.
4. Using a lot of garlic in the food may cover the odour of mildewed napkins.
5. Sixteen cloves of garlic is probably too much for any one pasta dish.
6. Serving a muscularly aromatic red wine may temper the odour of garlic.
7. Drinking cheap wine triggers many extra trips to the bathroom after lights out.
8. Squeaky bathroom door hinges can keep the entire household awake most of the night.

Most of the items on my list are related to inherent personality problems, but one of them is completely fixable. Let's start with that, since fixing a personality is expensive and possibly hopeless.

Out, Darned Squeak

Squeaking door hinges may be noisy for several reasons, including bad paint jobs, corrosion, rust, wear and tear, or old lubricant that's become tacky.

There are several ways to fix a squeaky hinge. You can try standing underneath the hinge, reaching up, and squirting a lubricant into it. Using this technique guarantees lubricant in your hair and eyebrows, lubricant running down your arm, down your leg, down the door and onto the carpet. Depending on your personality, you may be unable to avoid this approach.

But if you can stand it, remove the hinge pins and place them on newspaper to accommodate the mess on a horizontal plane rather than on a catastrophically vertical one.

Take the hinge pins out one at a time and work on them in sequence, replacing each one after you've cleaned and lubricated it. That way there will be at least one hinge in place at all times, so while you have your back turned, the door will not fall off.

Pin Up

To remove a hinge pin, place the tip of a nail on the underside of the hinge pin, and then tap it with a hammer. This should force the hinge pin up and out.

If your hinge is designed so that the nail technique can't possibly work, try sliding the tip of a slotted screwdriver under the head of the hinge pin, and then whack the handle of the screwdriver with a hammer. Work from side to side on the head until there's enough of the pin showing that you can wrap your fingers around it and yank it out.

Now that you've got the hinge pin out, inspect it to see how badly corroded it is. If it's rusty or pitted on the surface, run steel wool over it 'til the surface is smooth and slightly glossy.

Lube Job

Everyone will tell you to lubricate your hinges with WD-40, but it's not a lubricant. Surprised? I know I was. The 'WD' stands for Water Displacement. By displacing water from metal surfaces, WD-40 prevents rust and corrosion. But it's too light to work as a long-lasting lubricant.

By the way, the '40' in WD-40 stands for the number of attempts it took the lead scientist, Norm Larsen, to get the formula right. No wonder my pasta dish didn't work. It was GS-02-UO (Garlic Surprise, second attempt, uh-oh).

What WD-40 does do brilliantly is clean off corrosion, degrease surfaces and prevent rust. But, since it was never intended as a lubricant, you'll need to add something to the hinges after you've cleaned them with WD-40, or they'll be squeaking again in no time.

The best thing I've found for lubricating hinge pins is motorcycle chain lubricant, which is so thorough you can even skip the WD-40. Castrol 'Chainlube', for example, is formulated to clean, penetrate and protect, just like WD-40. But it goes one step further. It lubricates. So this adds an anti-wear capability. Plus it's formulated to be non-drip, so no disastrous spot-removal emergencies.

Motorcycle chain lubricant was developed to penetrate deeply into metal for a long-lasting, slippery coating that won't wear off or be affected by changes in temperature and humidity. Now, if you don't want to cough up the five bucks for motorcycle chain lubricant, you can use petroleum jelly. It tends to collect dust and dirt, but will otherwise provide long-wearing, non-drippy service. (Clean the hinge pins first with WD-40, then slather on the petroleum jelly and work the hinge up and down, up and down, to distribute the lubricant. Ask any married person for pointers.)

Lube Alert

Don't use cooking oil as a hinge lubricant. It works in a pinch but gets really sticky in about a month. Also, avoid using dry graphite powder as a hinge lubricant. Graphite tends to distribute fine black powder in a gentle mist all over everything, which is okay for an outdoor gate or a garage door. But indoors (unless you've decorated exclusively with tone-on-tone black), avoid graphite for de-squeaking.

May your next experience with houseguests be both garlic-neutral and squeak-free.