Garage Door Disaster

I’ve never cared about my garage door, that is until it broke!  Then I realized how expensive they were.  Of course I didn’t want to spend any money to get a new one.  I called the manufacturer and basically we discovered the engine was toast and wanted 100 dollars to replace it.  I went to home depot and new units were like 150.  I only had parked outside of my garage door for like 5 days and it was awful! Cars get so flippin hot out in the sun!  I searched craigslist but didn’t find any great deals.  My garage door was a drive/screw shaft and so of course I wanted something similar so I could just have all the same set up.  But couldn’t find one to save my life.  So I had this guy on craigslist with a belt driven motor, I ended up getting him to go to 40 dollars and he lived right down the street.  I went to pick it up and everything was in pieces with no manual.  So literally I spent my entire Saturday installing this new motor and brackets etc.  It was hands down, the hardest project, I have ever done in my life, mostly because it’s a two person job. How I ever was able to raise the bar and motor all by myself on each end is beyond me.  I used two ladders to help and at one point, one of them fell, I couldn’t get the belt to go on, no matter how I hard I pulled, the brackets wouldn’t reach to the new position, it was literally one mess after another.  Finally around 8pm at night, I had everything installed and it was working.  I went to put the cover on the motor and it was completely gross with grease finger prints from holding it this or that way to get it installed.  I went to clean it and when it didn’t shine up to my standards, I thought, what the heck, why not paint it.  And since I love and have turquoise spray paint, it ended up turquoise-unlike all other garage doors out there.  So far, the 40 bucks machine has worked well and I hope it doesn’t break anytime soon!

Before

After