Oak Lawn, IL · Same-day service
Choosing and Fitting a New Door on an Oak Lawn Home
On an Oak Lawn brick ranch the garage door is the largest single object on the front of the house. It sits at street level, it is wider than any window, and it is the first thing anyone reads from the sidewalk. That makes the choice a frontage decision as much as a mechanical one.
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We fit doors on both sides of the village: attached fronts on the post-war ranches, and detached brick garages set back off the alley. The two jobs share almost nothing except the tape measure.
Fitting a door into a masonry opening
A great many garages here are brick, with a steel angle lintel over the opening and wooden jambs fixed back to the masonry. That changes the survey. We measure the finished opening, the headroom up to the underside of the joists, the side room the vertical track needs, and the state of the jamb timber the track has to be lagged into. Soft or split jamb gets replaced rather than drilled through and hoped for.
Openings from the fifties and sixties are also frequently out of square, and pockets of the village were rebuilt after the 1967 tornado, so a late-sixties frame can sit two doors along from a 1954 one. The door is ordered to the opening as it actually is, and the difference is taken up in stop moulding and seal, not by forcing a catalogue size into a hole that will not take it.
Singles that became doubles, and what that left behind
Plenty of Oak Lawn garages started with one 8-foot or 9-foot door and were opened up to a 16-foot double later on. Some of those conversions were done properly. Others left a header barely carrying the span, track spliced to reach, or a counterbalance never resized for the extra width.
A new door is the point at which all of that gets put right. We check the header carries what it needs to, replace the track instead of reusing it, and size the springs for the door that is actually going on the wall.
Where insulation earns its keep, and where it does not
If the garage is attached with living space beside or above it, an insulated steel door with a proper thermal break makes a difference you will notice in February. It is also a stiffer and quieter door, which matters when the garage shares a wall with a bedroom.
On a detached, unheated brick garage the heating argument mostly disappears. What you still get is a door that resists dents, holds its shape across a 16-foot span, and runs quieter on the rails. We would rather tell you which of those applies to your garage than sell insulation into both.
Other work we do in Oak Lawn
- Torsion Springs
- Extension Springs
- Roller Repair
- Panel Replacement
- Smart Openers
- Commercial
- Custom Doors
- Maintenance
- Safety Inspection
- Lubrication
- Spring Replacement
- Opener Repair
- Emergency Service
- Cable Repair
- Track Repair
Installation in nearby towns
More on garage door installation, or everything we cover in Oak Lawn.
Questions
Oak Lawn questions about this job
Our house is red brick with white trim. What colour door actually works?
On the brick ranches around here white and almond stay the safe answers, because they pick up the trim instead of competing with the brick. Darker doors work well when the trim and roof are dark too. Show us a photo at the estimate and we will hold samples against the real brick in daylight.
The garage is detached and never heated. Is an insulated door wasted on it?
Not wasted, but buy it for the right reason. With no heat in the building you are paying for rigidity, quieter running and dent resistance rather than warmth. On a detached garage, putting the money into better hardware and a decent opener often returns more day to day.
Can the opening be widened at the same time as the new door?
Sometimes. Widening a masonry opening is structural work involving the lintel and the framing above it, and it is not something we take on sight unseen. We will measure, tell you plainly whether it is straightforward or a job for a carpenter or mason first, and quote the door around that answer.
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