Sometimes a project goes together so well that it is simply a joy to work on. It’s the way you imagine all your projects to be, but rarely are. This was one such project.
Meet GarageDoor.
GarageDoor is bad at his job, he’s old and doesn’t latch properly. He swings up and wastes vital head room for a good portion of the garage space, he…
What? No. I’m not telling them you’re a hero who survived multiple wint… because it’s not true… you’re a door… no. Because it’s my blog, that’s why. Of course I don’t like you, you aren’t good at… no… If you want to tell your side of the story, get your own blog.
Sorry about that.
Anyway. He had to go.
A month back I found a steel exterior door on craigslist for $10. I wanted to use it instead of GarageDoor. I imaged something like this:
Around 8 AM I started disassembling the hinge system for the door and carefully took it down. It was probably a two person job, but I took it slow and it went smoothly. Once down, I removed the few bolts that held the left and right sides together.
My dad showed up around 9:30 AM and we made a single trip to the hardware store for supplies.
Yeah. You read that. A single trip to the hardware store. Like I said, some projects are just a joy to work on.
We laid down some beats block so the small segment of wall would match the rest of the addition. While waiting for the cement to cure, we hung the steel door and put on the door knob. Then took a break for lunch.
Our break wasn’t quite enough for everything to cure completely, but it set enough that we felt comfortable putting the wall on next. I had a large number of 2x6s from my roofing project that we had already decided we would use for the wall.
The wall section we were making was about five feet long. We cut the wall studs to the right length and carefully set it in place. We had to be careful not to bump the half-inch bolts that we would later bolt the bottom board to. It was a little tricky, but not too difficult.
Again, I had kept the few extra pieces of OSB from my roofing project with this project in mind. We cut the sheet into pieces to fit and screwed it into place.
The instructions with the building permit (yeah… that’s another story…) said I needed to use a house wrap, which meant buying a 100 foot roll and using about 10 feet of it.
To match the existing siding, we bought two long boards of siding. We cut it to length and it was just enough to cover the new wall.
A little door trim and the project was done! We finished before 3 PM, which is just the right for a project of this size.
Several days later I borrowed a paint sprayer from work and gave it a few nice coats of white to match the rest of the garage wall. (This photo is after the first coat is on and it’s still a little blotchy. You can also see how off white the old siding is.)
This is one of my favorite improvements right now, giving me much better access to my garage and workspace.