7 great reasons to replace your garage door

If this sounds like you, here are some important facts to keep in mind as reminders of how important these doors are:

• Your garage door is the largest moving feature of your home
• It’s typically about 30 to 40% of a house’s entire façade
• 70% of homeowners use their garage doors more than the front door of their actual homes

As the vast majority of people won’t take action until they’re absolutely fed up with something, here are seven reasons your current garage door should be replaced. These should help you find the motivation to finally get a new one.

Sick of freezing?

More and more, garages serve as extensions of the rest of the home. They no longer serve solely as a space for parking cars. Homeowners have begun using them for everything from workshops to handiwork areas to places kids can play safely.

If you’d like to do the same, you’re going to need a garage door that offers at least an R‑12 level of insulation. Furthermore, you’ll want to make sure that it’s outfitted with sufficient weatherstripping. It has to go at the bottom of the door, between its sections, and around its perimeter. You can’t allow for any thermal bridges like steel end caps to go unsealed at the end of the sections.

Sick of painting?

Without a doubt, one of the most annoying parts of maintaining a wood or metal garage door is spending a beautiful Saturday afternoon painting it.

These days, almost all garage door manufacturers offer models with oven-baked paint that are designed to be weather-resistant.

Still, before you purchase one, learn about the number of coats of paint the door has received. This includes the galvanization that was used to make it rust-resistant.

Remember, you want baked-on paint because it’s far more resistant than the kind that is applied with a spray paint gun in the paint shop.

Sick of straining?

The vast majority of garage doors are controlled with an electric garage door opener. If that fails, you’ll need to lift the door manually. A well-balanced one will weigh between 8 and 10 pounds (3.5 and 4.5 kg).

Remember, even with an electric door opener, it can only replace human strength. In other words, it can only move as much as you can. However, a door opener can easily move 250 pounds in either direction. This is what you want with a new door to make its operation a breeze.

Sick of looking at it?

As we mentioned at the beginning of this post, a garage door can easily make up 30% to 40% of a home’s façade. If you plan to sell your house anytime soon, it’s probably the first thing a potential buyer is going to see. You better hope it makes the right first impression and doesn’t scare them off.

If you talk to real estate agents, they’ll tell you that you’ll have a much easier time quickly selling your home if the garage door is attractive and well-maintained.

There’s definitely no lack of new garage door designs available today, either. No matter what kind of style home you have, you’ll find a garage door model that complements it perfectly.

If you add windows to your door, look for ones that will match the kind you have on your front door.

Sick of being so noisy?

Nothing is quite as annoying as having a bedroom over a garage that makes lots of noise. It’s the worst kind of alarm clock.

Still, most of us put off doing something about this, despite how much of an interruption it is on a regular basis.

However, that annoying noise your garage door makes might actually be the symptom of a dangerous problem, so don’t put it off for too long.

It only takes a couple of minutes to identify the source of the issue. If you don’t have the time to find it, contact a garage door specialist. They can carry out a tune‑up service call to find and resolve the problem.

Sick of constantly paying for repairs?

A garage door that constantly needs repairs should be replaced.

Remodeling Magazine has a great article that touches on why. In short, it says that a garage door is third on the list of home features that will give you the best returns on what you spend in renovations.

On average, a new door only costs about $1,650, but you can recoup 91.5% of that amount when you sell!

Consider what that would mean if you bought a $1650 door for a home that is worth $250,000. That cost would only be 0.7% of the total!

Sick of getting wet because your garage door doesn’t work?

A huge percentage of service calls to garage door specialists have to do with electric garage door openers not working. If yours is getting on in years, it’s time to replace it. This isn’t just a matter of reliability but one of safety, too.

Since 1993, garage door openers have been made with two automatic reverse systems. More importantly, they are designed with rolling codes so that yours can’t be stolen.

Nowadays, you can even operate your garage door from your smartphone no matter where you are in the world.

You can also get one that comes with an emergency battery, so your garage will open and close even when there’s a power outage.

Convinced it’s time for a new garage door?

Then contact us at 860-666-9315. We’re happy to answer any questions you may have about the information we provided above. You can also request an online quotation from us if you like.

Finally, if you’ve decided to replace your garage door, use our Design Centre to create the perfect version for your home. If you need help getting started, we have an entire image gallery you can reference.