Garage Thread

[dr bob]

Staircase shot… believe it or not I’m getting ready to paint the whole inside… that stairwell is a 24’ hole
Before I paint tho I’m trying to figure out a roll up garage door… geee they’re free!!!

I've retro'd the sectional garage doors in the last few houses to move the tracks up close to the ceiling. Two have vaulted ceilings so the doors follow the wall to the ceiling then follow the sloped ceilings. The last one had screw-drive openers, with the openers mounted right to the sloped ceiling, door less than 4" from the same ceiling when open. Current garage follows the same theme, but I used shaft drive openers instead to keep the ceiling just slightly cleaner. The shaft drive openers are amazingly smooth and quiet compared to screw or even the belt-drive openers, and a bonus is that you can get the doors even closer to the ceiling.

At each home, I had to work closely with the door company. At the last home, they couldn't get their arms around the concept even with my installation drawings, so I ended up installing them myself much to their disbelief. They came to "inspect" the installation to validate the warranty, and even after the function demo were still scratching their heads and telling me why it couldn't work that way.

For the current house I shared the same drawings prior to construction, this time with pictures of the installed doors from the last home, and no major issues except the doors were over a foot from the ceiling rather than tight to it as the drawings showed. Installer argued that the door couldn't work close to the ceiling. But it does now.

[blueline]

Finally painted it…

It looked great before and now new paint too!

[GT3Twenty10]

I contacted TMAX and it was going to be 6500.00 for the cool mofo roll up

[blueline]

Staircase shot… believe it or not I’m getting ready to paint the whole inside… that stairwell is a 24’ hole
Before I paint tho I’m trying to figure out a roll up garage door… geee they’re free!!!

I've retro'd the sectional garage doors in the last few houses to move the tracks up close to the ceiling. Two have vaulted ceilings so the doors follow the wall to the ceiling then follow the sloped ceilings. The last one had screw-drive openers, with the openers mounted right to the sloped ceiling, door less than 4" from the same ceiling when open. Current garage follows the same theme, but I used shaft drive openers instead to keep the ceiling just slightly cleaner. The shaft drive openers are amazingly smooth and quiet compared to screw or even the belt-drive openers, and a bonus is that you can get the doors even closer to the ceiling.

At each home, I had to work closely with the door company. At the last home, they couldn't get their arms around the concept even with my installation drawings, so I ended up installing them myself much to their disbelief. They came to "inspect" the installation to validate the warranty, and even after the function demo were still scratching their heads and telling me why it couldn't work that way.

For the current house I shared the same drawings prior to construction, this time with pictures of the installed doors from the last home, and no major issues except the doors were over a foot from the ceiling rather than tight to it as the drawings showed. Installer argued that the door couldn't work close to the ceiling. But it does now.

It wouldn't do me any good to make changes as you did since my ceilings not high enough to take advantage of the extra space, but it would be great to see pictures of how your doors look. Might give some of us ideas anyway!

[Tom]

Finally painted it…

That looks fantastic -- congrats!

[Tom]

Staircase shot… believe it or not I’m getting ready to paint the whole inside… that stairwell is a 24’ hole
Before I paint tho I’m trying to figure out a roll up garage door… geee they’re free!!!

I've retro'd the sectional garage doors in the last few houses to move the tracks up close to the ceiling. Two have vaulted ceilings so the doors follow the wall to the ceiling then follow the sloped ceilings. The last one had screw-drive openers, with the openers mounted right to the sloped ceiling, door less than 4" from the same ceiling when open. Current garage follows the same theme, but I used shaft drive openers instead to keep the ceiling just slightly cleaner. The shaft drive openers are amazingly smooth and quiet compared to screw or even the belt-drive openers, and a bonus is that you can get the doors even closer to the ceiling.

At each home, I had to work closely with the door company. At the last home, they couldn't get their arms around the concept even with my installation drawings, so I ended up installing them myself much to their disbelief. They came to "inspect" the installation to validate the warranty, and even after the function demo were still scratching their heads and telling me why it couldn't work that way.

For the current house I shared the same drawings prior to construction, this time with pictures of the installed doors from the last home, and no major issues except the doors were over a foot from the ceiling rather than tight to it as the drawings showed. Installer argued that the door couldn't work close to the ceiling. But it does now.

We worked with probably 4 or 5 garage door companies trying to design and install our big carriage doors, and had the same experience. They can put up a standard door and opener in the blink of an eye, but literally none of our local garage door companies were able to help much with our doors. Admittedly, these 9-foot swinging doors are way out of the norm, but in dealing with the door companies it became apparent that they weren't in business because of their creativity. We ended up using a combination of a structural engineer and general contractor to come up with the plan (the doors and doorways have welded steel frames under the wood, and the hardware is from the metal swinging gate world). After the doors were up and swinging fine, no one was able to get the openers to work right after over 6 weeks of trying. I ended up getting the manual and one afternoon I went through every connection one at a time with my own mutlimeter and soldering iron, with the help of a smart carpenter. Despite all the hand-waving about the mysteries of this 'foreign' system (i.e., not a LiftMaster, Genie or Chamberlain, and therefore exotic), it was just a series of bone head mistakes that no one spent the time to sort out.

[GT3Twenty10]

Here is the email I got back from TMAX…. It’s a little vague… there is no one in MN that’s done this so they help coordinate all that… it just sounds like a lot of Bull cheet

[Jfort]

It took me only 69 years to finally get a real garage/shop. I did it 50-50 with my son who owns a drilling & blasting company and keeps his rock drill in the west end of the 7,200SF building.

There is an office with a mezzanine for storage, bathroom, and utility room for water heater, sink and air compressor. We committed just in time before the prices of everything went crazy 2 1/2 years ago.

I went with BendPak lifts, both a 4-post and a 2-post. The 4-post can be moved around and I have a 100' extension cord on a pallet. The 2-post has 10,000# capacity so we can put my son's work truck on it.

We rent spaces to a handful of people, hence some of the cars I can't afford: Maserati, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Mustang GT, etc.

I used to keep my cars and tools in 3 different places. Once consolidated, I found out that I have five floor jacks and EIGHT torque wrenches! I recently made a data base and am in the process of doing an inventory with locations of all the tools, mainly so I can find stuff when I need it. I was given 3 tool boxes so I have metric, torx and SAE.

My Navy stereo system from the '70's finally has a home and I love being by myself and cranking in up. My daughter in law provided a big flat screen TV.

Pressure washer and floor drains -- I can wash cars in the winter, finally.

The real joy has been doing projects with my son. I am truly thankful. Pictures follow

[Jfort]

My wife taking the transmission out of the 914-6. I am done with rolling around on the floor and getting vertigo!

[Tom]

Love the garage -- just awesome!! And great cars too! Love your wife's "that's right, I did this" look! Post of the day!