The Importance of Garage Door Maintenance
The garage door is often the part of the house that most people forget to maintain the garage door. It is easy enough to remember to cut the grass when it tickles your knees as you walk into your house, but you may have trouble remembering to take care of your garage door until you are trying to park your car and it just will not open. Worse yet, until you may not know there is a trouble with garage door and there are holes in the panels of garage door. But with a few simple practices you can keep .your garage door in great shape to protect your car and tools.
To prevent any long term damage to moving mechanical parts on your door it will be good idea to lubricate to the moving mechanical parts of the garage door from time to time. Spray all the hinges, rollers, and tracks with a little WD-40 to keep things moving freely. It may even be a better idea to spray all the movable pieces of the locking system to secure it from rusting up. If you are the type of person that normally doesn’t park their car in the garage then you may be in more danger of this than someone who opens and closes the door frequently.
For wooden garage doors you need to make sure that both sides of the panels are painted. Frequently changing temperatures that can lead to rotting painting garage door helps to shield the door from humidity and rotting. If your door is rotting through then you are not shielding your possessions from the elements. Make sure that you are not keeping the paint thinners or the caustic liquid near your garage door because these materials had bad effect on garage door paint or as the slow leaks that often happen in these containers may lead to damage to the paint.
If you have a metal garage door you still need to make sure that the paint job on your garage door is intact. The paint helps protect the door from rust, which can cause holes or the moving parts to lock up. But whether you have a medal or wooden door it is important to make sure that you keep the door clean. Excessive dirt may eventually wear away at the paint job, or get into the moving pieces and cause spoil over time. You should use a soft cleaner to wash the door, as something caustic may damage the paint job faster than the dirt. Dish soap or any kind of soap you would use to wash your car will do well to protect the paint job.
Also important to check from time to time is the spring tension. The springs that help lift your door up and down can wear out from the weight of the door it is constantly lifting up and setting down. If the door feels too heavy when you open it, or if it sounds like your motor is struggling with the weight of the door than it may be time to change the springs. Use caution because these springs are kept under constant tension and can be dangerous if not removed properly. If you are not sure how to do this then you may want to call a professional.
An old metal garage door has different needs than one made of wood. They both require paint jobs but for slightly different reasons. If wood isn’t repainted after a number of years the wood could rot; if a metal garage door isn’t repainted after a number of years the metal will begin to rust.
Furthermore, whereas cracks in wood doors can be filled easily with wood putty or caulk metal doors are much harder to mend. The best thing to do to preserve your metal door is paint it when it has enough scratches to warrant the effort. A few scratches may not be a problem but after a while you’ll want to protect it from the elements.
If you have a metal garage door that needs painting, here are a few things you’ll need to get the job done: scouring pad, detergent, drop cloth, paintbrush, roller, roller pan, primer, paint, and ladder.
The following are some suggestions on how to go about painting the door.
- Clean the door well removing any residue, dirt, or grime that may have accumulated over the years. Scrub with detergent and an abrasive sponge and don’t worry about scratching the door because you’re going to paint it. Also, it’s important to remove as much pealing paint as possible so the new coats will set nicely.
- Allow door to dry.
- Spread out the drop cloth along the door’s length to catch any paint or dust.
- Sand down the door. This will give the paint a better chance of sticking properly. Make sure all pealing paint was removed and all rough spots are smooth.
- Using a good quality primer coat the metal door with roller and brush.
- Allow the primer to dry.
- Using a quality acrylic paint apply the first coat on the door with roller and brush.
- Check edges to make sure you covered all spots.
- Be proud of your door, which looks brand new!
You can be the talk of the neighborhood if you have a paint brush, painting skills and a garage door. You would think that First coast garage doors were the new way of asserting the homeowner’s social standing, one thing is for certain that they are providing the owners to express their creativity. The streets of northwest area suburbs with their hand painted murals, brightly colored geometric designs, and a multitude of pre-made commercial designs never fail to appeal to the passing motorists.
Greatest variation in garage door designs, however, appear where the homes themselves lack any basic design distinction from neighboring units, a result of home developers’ efforts to achieve economy of construction. The fear of being stereo typed is what lead the various home owners to do something different. There are many people who are still not in a position to be able to do as they like with their house because of less finances, these people can however come up with creative decorations for the garage door to make it look stunning in less money.
Nevertheless, there are definite exceptions when a certain person in the family has a creative edge and goes for something different. Most women normally have a hard time getting their husbands to paint anything. However there might also be a case where the wife has to stop her husband from redecorating at every opportunity he gets. This is what the wife of a 37 year old painter had to say. The overhead garage door has seen two murals created by the painter on it in the past five years.
Pink and grey were the colors of the first mural which gave the impression that a woman and a man were driving in to the garage but now the main entrance of the garage has an old car standing there. To make their home look different from other ones in their neighborhoods, the husband wife duo decided upon this bright idea. The garage mural apparently does not serve the function as intended by the husband wife duo and is now being used as a landmark for providing directions to their neighbors.
An unusual checkerboard design on the garage door of one of her neighbors is the result of the wife’s handiwork who was formerly a commercial artist. The look that she gave it is an eight inch long checkerboard with shades of brown. Though the house and the garage door were not really proportionate to each other, according to her, the design would be able to take the viewers attention of that fact.
After the work was done there she was, asked may questions by her neighbors about how she got the idea and the time taken to complete it. One of the neighbors chose a design with flowers because they thought that was different. This man, her neighbor is a painting contractor who has planned to paint the design in different colors four times a year in accordance with the changing seasons.
But if you don’t have that artistic genius in you, don’t worry. The garage door companies have thought of providing the customers with custom designs which can be applied with just need glue and staples. When inquired, a door manufacturer told us that it has become a priority to have these custom designs of every type as well. You even have the choice of colors to be able to choose according to the color of your home.
Most people choose doors and designs to correspond to the style and color scheme of their homes. On the other hand there are a few of the braver ones who will just go for any design merely because they like it. Older homes, as is the case generally, have conservative designs despite the fact that there is not much correlation between design and price of a garage door. Simple styles are the norm for decoration of garage doors of homes which are more distinctive looking than other surrounding structures.
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