Last Updated on 2 years by Christopher G Mendla
Should you replace or repair a wooden garage door? Is it worth repairing and refinishing an old garage door or is it better to replace the door? Here are some thoughts about your choices.
The choice – Repair or replace?
My attached garage has two single doors. I’ve been in the house almost 25 years. The doors were there when I purchased the home so I’m assuming they could be 40 years old. I had painted them once since I moved in. Yeah, I know I should have been more proactive but when there are multiple number one priorities, one needs to triage.
The doors use extension springs. When I moved in, they did not have safety cables. I installed them due to the danger of a snapped spring or cable. The springs need to be calibrated to the weight of the door. Absorbed moisture and layers of paint will add to the weight of the door. At some point, you will need heavier springs or you will need to adjust the anchor points. In addition, I had added a 1×4 at the bottom of the one door due to some cracks in the frame. That was a jury rig but it kicked the maintenance can down the road.
The original plan – Strip, repair and refinish
My original plan was to strip the old paint and repair any rotted/damaged parts. After that, I would repaint with a high quality latex paint. I didn’t think that the additional effort and cost of an oil based paint would be worth it.
The doors were in pretty bad shape, especially the bottom panel. As you can see in the picture below there was a good bit of rot. That could possibly be repaired with a epoxy and putty and a good bit of patience
As I started working on the door, I was raising and lowering it and checking out old panels. While I was doing that the cable holding the one side pulled loose from the door.
Time to think about plan b which was replacing the door.
I realized that the door was in worse shape than I thought. The fact that the cable pulled loose from the bottom of the door indicated that the doors could be dangerous. I had expected to spend $200 for materials for both doors and perhaps a weekend on each each door.
The price of a basic door at the homestore was a about $450. I figured that I would be able to use the existing track which would save some time on the install. Be careful if you do this and as using your existing track could void the warranty.
I’d doubted that the door would fit in my Ford explorer easily. I brought my 8 foot utility trailer. What I did not figure on was a couple inches all padding on both ends of the container. In other words the box is about eight and half feet I just strapped the box down and did not put the tailgate back on the trailer.
Warning -garage doors can be heavy and awkward. In addition, the springs are all under a great deal of tension. There is a real possibility of death or injury while working with the doors.
The tricky part, was getting the tension off the springs. I did this by raising the door and clamping it. I put some trash cans under the door to break any fall if it got away from me. This was a bit dangerous as the door is very heavy. I used the garage door opener to lower it. That put a pretty good strain on the opener but fortunately it could handle it. Once I had the door down I began are removing the hinges that held the top panel.
The hinges for the doors used square nuts instead of hex head nuts. I found that a metric socket all the right size would fit the square nut and allow me to use my drill to spin the nuts off quickly. I started with the top panel. I underestimated the awkwardness and weight. Fortunately, I was able to control it as I removed it.
I repeated the process for the remaining three panels. At that point I began assembling the new door using the existing track. I was able to get the door pretty much in position using what remained of the afternoon after running to the store to buy the door.
The following day, I finished the rest of the installation and fine tuned the opening and closing.
I had some dry rot in the bottom of the trim that I had to fix. I now had a brand new door instead of a 40 year old plus door. Since I got the bottom line door, it did not come with windows. The all white door looked a little boring. I ordered packages of fake magnetically attached hinges and fake magnetic windows. In my opinion, that made the door a lot more interesting.
Summary
If I had been able to keep the old doors, I probably would’ve put out about $600 less. However, as I started I realized that they were in much worse shape than I thought they were. Since the metal doors are much lighter, that should ease the load on the garage door openers.