Garage door

Saturday, my wife's garage door opener wouldn't work. After confirming that the remote was working fine, I noticed a cable had snapped on one of the two large springs that support the weight of the door. I went to Home Depot, bought a new 12 ft. cable, came home, raised the door by pulling up on it--so much for pampering my bad shoulder and elbow!--while my wife operated the opener, and began to install it. Then I realized I needed a nine-footer. Back to HD, bought the shorter cable, came home to find one side of the sixteen-foot-wide door had ripped out of the ceiling! It was hanging at about a 15-degree angle, held in place mostly by the now-bent arm of the garage door opener. After cutting open the ceiling to reinstall the ripped-out support and getting a shower of cellulose insulation all over me in the process, I realized that I needed a piece of angle iron to replace the old one which had cracked from the collapse. I almost went back for a third time to the Depot, then decided, 'No. This is what insurance is for."

I called Steve, the guy who'd installed the door twenty-two years ago, and he said he'd come over Sunday and take a look. I screwed some vertical 2x4s to the sides, top and bottom of the raised door to make sure it didn't collapse completely in the meantime. At this point, all my plans for Saturday were shot; the door had eaten up too much time and worn me out. I had a beer instead.

I stayed up till midnight Saturday night browsing garage doors on the internet: I figured it was time to replace the door with a fancier one, since insurance would cover the work of replacing the old one (if it was indeed shot), so we'd only need to pay for the difference in value of the upgraded door. I was also hoping that Steve would say it was fine propped up for now and we'd order the new door, and he and his crew would replace it when the new one came in. However, he took one look and said it couldn't stay like this. Should I replace it? Probably, he said. Can we leave it for now? No, we'd better take it down, or reinstall it temporarily.

Well, now I was seeing more uninsured expense. If the door still worked, we'd have to pay the full cost of taking down the old one after it was reinstalled, plus the full cost of purchasing and having them install the new one. We decided to reinstall the old one and see how it looked. That meant I would be helping Steve right then--no finishing my own projects while he and his crew did all the heavy lifting.

It took almost three hours of lifting the heavy door manually, propping it up on a long log laid across two ladders (luckily, we'd been doing some logging in the back yard the week before), clamping off various rails, re-bending stressed metal, replacing various hinges, bars and pivots and sweeping up lots of insulation. The good news: the old door works fine now, runs more quietly (why didn't I think of oiling the moving parts all these years?) and has new safety cables installed so the springs can never snap and put someone's eye or windshield out. The large springs, which used to hang down low enough when the door was opened that I would periodically bang my head on one, now stay close to the ceiling thanks to an alternative layout Steve came up with.  He charged me about half his normal Sunday rate because my attorney wife helped him out with some legal issue years ago. (See? Do a good thing and it comes back to you----karma may take a long time to come back around,  but it comes.) It came out to less than our deductible, so there was no need to involve the insurance company. And I figured out, after discussing the ins and outs of altering the door, how I will remake the door so it looks like old-fashioned out-swinging carriage doors instead of one wide fake-wood grained slab! I had decided the door needed to look better and was resigned to spending big money on a new one.

What I've left out is that I got up at 6:45 Sunday because I had to be at a "breakfast" at 8:30 AM, which turned out to be just muffins, coffee and juice. I really need seven and a half hours' sleep and a decent breakfast including protein to feel alert, so I wound up taking two naps during the day. That, plus the garage door project, did in all my planned Sunday projects.

The garage door spring could have hit one of us when the cable snapped, or taken out a windshield or other window. The door could have collapsed completely---on the car or one of us. It could have fallen sideways and ruined all sorts of things stored in the garage. As it turned out, a lot of dirty, exhausting work was required. So what is the result of this almost-disastrous weekend?

I, ever the cockeyed optimist, am just excited about getting to work making the old slab door look like expensive carriage doors!

Of course, before I start that project, I have a Saturday and Sunday's worth of other projects to complete...