Garage Doors - December 2014

Today seemed like a good day to write a house blog post, since we were in the middle of a blizzard.  So in-between shoveling and playing in the snow, I wrote all about garage doors.  It's may not sound like the most exciting topic, but I decided to dedicate an entire post to this since there is a story that goes along with this project.  

The photo above is the finished product, but it took a long time to get there.  We ordered our doors from an American Overhead Door company on September 19th, and our garage doors were not completed until the beginning of December.  We were told we would have them in two weeks, but it took triple that amount of time!

As you can see in the above photo, we have two oversized garage door openings.  The car bay on the left fits two vehicles and is 18' wide x 9' tall.  The service bay on the right is 10' wide by 10' tall.  We ordered the garage doors custom to the size needed and with our choice of options.

To get ready for the garage door installation, the doors needed to be trimmed.  This was started about a week before we expected the doors to be arriving.

We decided that the most cost effective way to do matching trim would be with aluminum.  Aluminum coil is a versatile product that can be used to trim out windows, doors, fascia and other exterior areas on a home.  Using it to trim out the garage doors allowed us to match this trim with the rest of the house.   We used Harvey Trim Coil Aluminum.

Aluminum trim work requires skill, experience and the right tools.  Luckily, we were able to borrow the right tools!  An aluminum brake is used to bend the trim coil.  Below is a photo of the aluminum brake that we were able to borrow from a friend to use for this project as well as for the rest of the trim on the house.

Every piece of aluminum trim must be cut to fit, and bent to fit around the opening.  Decorative ribs can also be added to the trim, which provides some style and makes the trim even stronger.  Steve added some ribs along the garage door trim.  Here are some photos of Steve using the aluminum brake.

Cutting the aluminum.

Using the brake to bend the aluminum.

Repositioning for another bend.

Done!

Below are some close-up photos of the aluminum trim after being installed around the garage door openings.  It was not an easy piece of trim, and although Steve doesn't have a lot of experience with this (yet), it came out great!

Once the trim was completed, the garage door openings were ready for doors… except, there was an issue with our door order.  The garage door manufacturer did not actually receive our order until weeks after we ordered it.  They did not realize this until after my multiple persistent phone calls.  So, this caused a significant delay in making the garage doors.  We were not pleased, but at least we figured out why there was a delay.

As you can imagine, we were excited when we received confirmation on a delivery date.  However, about a week before delivery we were notified by the manufacturer that BOTH doors were inadvertently not made to the correct specifications.  So, they had to start again, and make a second set of doors for us… another delay.

We ended up having our "wrong" doors installed as temporary doors, about a month after our initial door order.  As you can see from the photo below, the doors are not the same color, and the door on the left does not have the correct panels.  Regardless, we were happy to have doors to close up the garage.

Despite the issue with the doors, we were pleased with the quality of the doors.  We decided to go with Clopay Garage Doors because they offered the most insulated garage door we could find and a wood grain finish.  They have a lot of really nice options and styles; we choose the Gallery Collection carriage house style with insulation.  The link is below.

http://www.clopaydoor.com/gallerysteel

We choose the Ultra Grain Dark finish, which has a wood pattern, even though it's a steel garage door. The door is a 3-layer construction and has 2" of insulation providing an R-value of 18.4.  An insulated garage door was important because we plan to heat the garage.  The windows in the doors are also double pane insulated.  In comparison, traditional garage doors have minimal or no insulation.

Final garage doors installed.

About two weeks after the "temporary" doors, our final doors arrived.  Finally, after six weeks, our long-awaited garage doors arrived and were installed!  Now that we have them, we are really happy with the doors!  Below is a close up of the big garage door.

As they say… when building, expect everything to take longer than you want it to.  This pretty much sums it up.

Next for doors… front door, side garage door and garage to house door.  Hopefully these will come in without any issues!