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Tag Archives: curb appeal

The All Purposeful Garage Door

Your garage door serves many purposes. It keeps your garage secure. It provides aesthetic appeal for your home. It also can be an energy efficiency product to help lower your energy bills.

You can get so much from a garage door that when it comes time to buy a replacement, you should shop smart. Make sure that the new one will be even better than the last. Do not settle for just any door. Shop around and be sure the model you get will serve all your purposes perfectly.

There are many considerations to make when choosing a new garage door. You should consider how you use the garage when making your choice. In some homes the garage is a playroom or a workshop in addition to keeping vehicles in out of the elements. How you use the garage will play into your final choice on a door.

You also need to make sure you get the right size of door. The wrong size of door will not serve any purpose. Take measurements carefully. Get help if you need it. Many retailers will offer help with taking measurements.

The appearance is also important. There are a range of styles, so you should try to [more]

Advancement in Energy Efficiency, Safety and Curb Appeal

The bitter cold of winter marks the time to rethink that garage door.

This is the season when homeowners usually make efforts to seal up the biggest opening in the home. It’s also a popular time for garage door replacement. It’s that time of year when weather has a distinct effect on the garage door business.

Steel isn’t a good insulator, so to compensate; manufacturers double up the panels and fill the space between them with polystyrene or polyurethane insulation. Polyurethane insulates better than polystyrene, but it tends to break down after a period of time, whereas polystyrene lasts forever.

Polystyrene is a flat, sheet-like material, similar to a Styrofoam cup. Polyurethane is pumped into a door as a liquid, then expands and fills the space between the metal sides of the door. There are some synthetic problems with polyurethane. It can dry erratically, leaving unprotected spots in the door. That problem is detectable when a homeowner sees granulated polyurethane draining from the door. A polyurethane-lined door, however, can often have a better R-value than the rest of the garage.

Polystyrene has a lower R-value, the insulation rating system, and also is less expensive. Single polyurethane doors are rated around R-15 and cost more.

Insulation [more]

Garage Doors Featured on Local News

Garage Doors Open Up Homes to Curb Appeal and Value

Garage doors just aren’t what they used to be. The garage door is a fundamental part of the blueprint, structural design and sanctuary of a home. The garage door is one of the most important visual features of a home, representing up to a third or even more of the front. They are now eye-catching, beautiful and — dare we say it? — even “cool.” In a marketplace where enhanced curb appeal, residential diversity, and neotraditional architecture are in demand by municipalities, we’re seeing an onslaught of more unique garage door styles, especially steel, three-section, carriage house-style garage doors.

Carriage house garage doors help us recall the charm of that turn-of-the-century swinging barn-door style, behind which hid a jaunty horse-drawn carriage. Today’s doors may look attractively retro, but they are also durable and they open overhead like any other modern sectional garage door.

Original carriage house doors were made of wood. Garage doors today are made from various materials including wood, composite and steel. Each type offers its own benefits, characteristics and costs.

Most homeowners want affordable beauty with low maintenance. That means a moderately priced, steel, carriage house garage door. Because they are all steel, all the parts expand and contract at [more]

Don’t Wait Until Your Garage Door Doesn’t Work… Maintain It!

For those of you who have moved into a new home or have just installed a new garage door, be sure to take the time to thoroughly read the garage door owner’s manual. It may seem like a chore and take time, but one would be surprised at what they can find in most well written garage door manuals. The manual will contain safety and design information to help you insure that your garage door is safe to use and properly installed, and contain information on how to keep your garage door properly maintained.

For example, many garage door manuals will contain helpful tips for painting them. Most companies will tell you to pain BOTH the inside and outside of the garage door to keep everything even, and to never remove any parts of the garage door when painting. If you want to make sure that your garage door is completely covered in a fresh coat of paint, you need to call in a professional to dismantle it so that you can finish the paint job, and then have the garage door installed again. This usually does not happen, but again, do not try to dismantle any of the parts of [more]

Garage Door Windows: Things To Consider

Garage doors, equipped with windows, not only allows for a structural design to be implemented into the garage door but also has the added flexibility of enhancing a garage.

Garage door windows allow for light to come into the garage, making a dark and gloomy space bright and cheerful. This in essence also brings the benefit of making the garage space a more workable and desirable area to use for everything from crafts to handyman type hobbies.

Since, for many houses, the garage is a large space that is viewed from the street, garage door windows can also accent the home. The windows on the garage door can really make a statement and many homeowners have realized this and when looking at garage door window replacement consider changing the windows.

When a consumer begins evaluating the decision to look at garage door window, there are some things to consider. The garage door window ia a way to spice up the garage door. When looking at garage door window consider a tinted glass for the windows. Many homes have garages that face the sun, by tinting the windows the heat in the garage will go down and help keep the part of the house that is [more]

Ever Evolving Door Styles

Some things do come back in style if you wait long enough.

Think hip-hugger pants, shag carpeting and, yes, even wood garage doors. The wood garage doors of the 1970s are back in a big way. It’s one of many design trends that have come and gone.

The first revolution in garage door materials happened in the 1980s, when raised panel steel doors replaced wood ones. They continue to dominate the market today, mainly because they’re economical and low-maintenance. But for certain homes — especially custom homes or those with an Old World look — a big expanse of cold steel just won’t do. Frequently the garage door is a major part of the front of a home and people are finding that they can do something more interesting.

For this reason, wood has become the most popular option. But these aren’t the humble wood doors of two decades ago. First United Door Technologies offers wood doors in a carriage-house style that has an old-fashioned craftsman look. Made of the finest wood, they offer a much richer appearance and you can expect to pay four times or more what you would for steel doors.

Just as wood is beginning to catch on, the next [more]

Don’t Overlook The Garage When Getting Your Home Ready To Sell

There’s a lot of talk about curb appeal being the driving force drawing buyers into your home. It makes sense. If the house looks a mess from the outside, what buyer would want to set foot inside?

Well, maybe your house isn’t quite a mess. You have taken the time to fix-up the landscape, power-washed the house, and even painted the mailbox. But did you overlook what can be the biggest eyesore — the garage? It’s the largest architectural element on the house. So it really, in this day and age, is impossible to dismiss the garage door as an important architectural element.

But the garage door is more than an architectural element. It can be a trigger point for buyers. They’re driving down the street in a tract-home neighborhood and suddenly they spot a custom wooden garage door. It’s striking and different and often gives them reason to stop and take a closer look, maybe even come inside.

If you have a house that has a nice garage door, it sets the stage for the fact that everything else in the house is going to have attention to detail and it really does differentiate homes that are on the same street. With [more]

Garage Doors Can Make a Change

Updating your curb appeal adds value and beautifies your home simultaneously.

A house with curb appeal stands out from the other homes and is noticed because it provides us with simple visual pleasure every time we pass by.

Here are some ideas that you can use to enhance your home and create curb appeal with your garage doors.

In an era when two-car garages are becoming standard in new home construction and door sizes are increasing to accommodate SUV’s and RV’s, garage door design matters more than ever in distinguishing the look of a home.

They come in a variety of design styles, colors, decorative windows, insulation values, material and sizes. The garage door is the largest working part of a house and often its most prominent feature. So, when you are buying, you want to choose carefully. Garage door replacement is one of the better home improvement projects in terms of recouping value when a house sells.

The right garage door can make or break many of those curb-appeal enhancements and considering the style of your home before purchasing a new garage door is important. If your house is Victorian, Farmhouse Country or Mid Century Modern, it will have an impact of what [more]

Have Your Cake and Eat It Too!

Did you ever think that a new garage door could almost pay for itself?

Garage door replacement ranked No. 2 in “cost recouped” on a list of 35 common home remodeling projects in Remodeling Magazine’s 24th annual Cost vs. Value Report.

The average midrange garage door replacement cost was estimated at $1,291. Resale value of the project averaged $1,083 – an 83.9 percent return on investment (ROI) at resale. In some cities, such as Charleston, W. Va., Honolulu, Providence, R.I., and San Francisco, the ROI for a new garage door was more than 100 percent.

Upscale garage door replacements were estimated to provide a 69.8 percent ROI – No. 4 among the upscale projects listed in the survey.

What does that mean to homeowners? You can have your cake and eat it, too. A new garage door can add to the beauty of your home as you live in it and enjoy it today, while also providing a high level of payback – nearly 84 cents of every dollar spent on the garage door replacement – when it’s time to sell.

What’s more, garage door replacement was one of the least expensive projects listed in the survey. That means a new garage door may be [more]