I sometimes get asked for stories on garage door repair jobs. I’ve fixed several doors that where hanging by a couple of rollers ready to fall. Those get pretty exciting. They aren’t too odd though. The reasons for those situations vary. Usually it comes down to bad maintenance and poor decisions!
I have seen a few people though trying to do their own maintenance. The problem they run into is not knowing how their garage door system works and safely doing their task. I see a lot of people trying to replace their rollers on their garage doors. This isn’t too bad. However, you can’t just unscrew the bottom bracket and roller. That’s attached to the cable that is attached to the torsion spring! Their door ends up crooked and I end up getting called. In fact, I had one guy who called me to fix his door. He took off the first bottom bracket. Couldn’t get it back on. He then went to the other side of the garage door. When he took that bracket off, he ended up with half a dozen stitches in his hand. And then called me when we got home.
I’m very bad at taking photos!
I just never remember to take before and after photos. Here’s one I snapped before I started an interesting job.
This homeowner decided they didn’t need a garage door but preferred a heated and cooled work space. They screwed the door to the frame and removed most of the hardware. Not too big of a deal. Some of the parts were missing and some of the parts were damaged. It was quite a strange job and took a little more time than I had anticipated. Having almost all the parts I need for a door repair ready to go on the truck makes it easy to replace any missing or damaged parts.
You can see the extension spring in the photo and the damage too it. A new set of extension springs were placed for this job. I’d typically recommend converting over to torsion garage door springs when doing something like this but there wasn’t enough overhead room without changing the tracks as well. To save money I just tossed on a new set of matching extension springs.
All ready to go just before summer started so the lawnmower can come in and out and he still has his workshop area ready to go. A new set of PVC weather trim around the door will help keep the breeze out of his workspace while keep the functioning door.
How can GEM Garage Door Repair help you?
Do you have a garage door project you need some help with? Give me a call at 740-414-4500 and I’d be happy to help you get an idea of what it would cost. I’m also happy to come out and take a look and give you a quote in person. Let me know how I can help.