garage door
Escape the Elements!
The needs of homeowners and the designs of garages today have evolved to include many distinct needs and applications that demand that garage door openers are diverse in their design and application.
Garage Door Openers are considered a necessity by most homeowners today and often rely on the garage door as the main entrance to the home. You don’t want to get out of the car in driving rain, blizzards, freezing cold or scorching heat – just press the button on your remote transmitter and your garage door opens automatically.
The new generation of garage door openers are reasonably priced, safe and easy to install. They are affordable and no longer a convenience for only a select few. So what happens when you lose power in your home?
Operating your door manually is no fun, especially in areas with frequent power outages. If you’re fortunate enough, you opener will have a battery backup system that will continue to operate your garage door.
For example, the LiftMaster 3850 opener features an ultra-quiet 12V DC motor with a belt drive system and the industry’s only integrated EverCharge™ Battery Backup system. The integrated battery backup technology not only powers the opener for up to 40 full cycles [more]
Repurposing the Garage Door
Retire and re-invent an aged outdoor item or architectural element that’s past its prime and give it a stylish new life indoors. This headboard was fashioned from an old garage door. It used to be easy to distinguish an outdoor from an indoor item, but with today’s trends toward recycling and repurposing, that’s no longer the case. Elements from outdoors are being creatively transformed into decorative and functional pieces to achieve a charming cottage style look in the home.
Don’t let that distressed door go to the landfill, dust it off and use it for a room divider or fashion it into a headboard. An old ladder or a boat oar easily transforms into a great place to hang towels in a kitchen or bath. With a little paint, an old metal ceiling tile makes a great magnetic chalkboard. Attach a recovered piece of architectural molding to a simple table or shelf for some spruced up style.
The possibilities are limited only by your imagination. So, don’t throw it out! Bring it in and sand it, paint it, love it! – Romancing the Home.
Troubleshooting a Garage Door Opener Keypad
Your garage door opener keypad works by using a wireless remote control that is similar to the one you use to turn your television on.
Like most types of remote control operated appliances, you will experience problems with your door opener from time to time. In most cases, the problem may stem from the keypad of the remote control. Troubleshooting keypad problems is quite easy and you can easily solve minor problems on this nature in just a few minutes. To help you troubleshoot your door opener keypad, here are some tips for you.
Fix the Frayed Wires
There is a big possibility that only one or two of the buttons on the keypad are problematic so you need to find these keys to solve the problem. The best way to find the problematic keys is to test the keys one by one. To do this, open the box of the remote control and look for frayed wirings between the keys. Loose contact between the wires and the keys is one of the most common reasons why your keypad malfunctions. Once you find the frayed wires, detach these wires completely then reattach them to the keypad. Make sure that the wires are securely [more]
‘Welcome Home, Cars’
When the car became the dominant means of transport in this country, every new house of any size had to have a garage.
Many if not most of these garages were given a prominent front-row spot – they faced the street. The phrase “attached garage” was a price booster. To be able to walk straight to it from the kitchen without braving the elements was a sign of arriviste luxury.
Often necessitated by lot size, a garage door dominates. Even when it’s not protruding, but set flush in the structure’s front, it manages to draw the eye, to make you look at – because they are closed most of the time – blank walls. The house becomes a backdrop.
“Welcome home, cars,” seems to be the greeting. Here’s the problem: Our cars are bigger and our garages are bigger. Most of our garages face the street so you can’t miss them. Bulky, boring garages make houses look bad and cheap. In certain neighborhoods, the homes look so much alike that the only way to find your house is to use the garage-door opener and see which one goes up.
There is a need to make the front elevation of the home inviting, and not [more]
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Anyone who has ever tried to accomplish anything in their garage during the cold months of the year is aware of the benefits of a heated garage.
Whether you have a shop out there or rehearse with your band, an unheated garage is extremely uncomfortable. It need not be as cozy as your den, but a little heat makes all the difference in the world. While that may be true, there are some disadvantages to heating your garage. The cost of insulating might be prohibitive, but without it any heating tends to be quite inefficient. The other problem is the cost of energy. Before you decide whether or not a heated garage is worth the cost, look at both sides of the issue.
Pros
An unheated garage is a most uncomfortable place to have your shop, workbench or makeshift recreation area. During the winter months you will spend as much energy keeping warm as you will on your project. Having to wear gloves, a hat and a scarf while building a model, jewelry box or anything else is no way to work. There are methods to heat your garage while you are present that will neither require a great initial investment nor [more]
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When it comes to remodeling, Americans are thinking small. It’s a reflection of the times we live in, according to Remodeling Magazine, a trade journal that each year conducts an extensive study of the typical costs of home-remodeling jobs, compared to ballpark estimates of how much of those expenditures homeowners would recoup at sale time.
The short version: Economic realities have generally snuffed out over-the-top kitchen remodels and room additions in favor of more modest jobs.
In broadest terms, the average return on investment of a remodeling project this past year at sale time was 60%, vs. 64% last year. The magazine studied tightly defined jobs on a national and regional basis, as well as for many cities. The study was conducted in collaboration with the National Association of Realtors, whose members offered payback estimates based on resale’s in their geographic areas.
The top five “moderate projects” with the strongest payback at resale time, returning 72% or more of their cost: steel entry-door replacement (at a cost of about $1,200); garage-door replacement ($1,000); wooden deck addition ($11,000); replacing 10 insulated, wooden windows clad in vinyl or aluminum ($12,000); an attic bedroom addition ($51,428).
The best bang for the buck was garage-door replacement. It was [more]
Garage Door Romance
Can any homeowner live without a garage door?
People leave garage doors alone until they’re broken, even though they can make a family safe. Garage doors are primarily made from two materials, steel and wood.
The scale of drudgery that they entail differentiates steel from wood residential doors, confirmed the product manager of a leading manufacturer of overhead rolling doors. Not much is needed to keep in optimum state steel doors coated with baked enamel. The enamel is a protective covering, needing only minor touch ups for scratches, for steel doors.
However, steel doors can also be painted. There are also those who prioritize a blend between the doors and the rest of the home exterior, preferring a full bodied paint. No harm comes to galvanized steel doors from rain, sleet, or snow.
Wood doors, unlike their steel cousins, can be ground down, resulting in rifts and sagging, if they are not safeguarded. It is highly recommended that at least two coats of oil based paint, stain or other exterior finish are applied. A single coat must be applied on an annual basis to preserve the wood.
Those who heed this guidance can expect their doors to stay looking new for decades to come. [more]