Intangible Tools For Residential Garage Door Repair, Part 1 - DDM Garage Doors Blog

When you view a garage door going up or down, you are likely surveying the largest moving part in a home’s structure. As such, it requires many sub-parts. These inevitably wear out due to the law of Entropy, or whatever you want to call it. In my observations of garage doors, both in normal function and in the replacement process, I see that many things have to happen in a mechanical sense for the garage door to operate correctly and safely. So it should come as no surprise that adjusting or fixing it is not a game of horseshoes. You will need the correct tangible and intangible tools for garage door repair.

If you are thinking of doing it yourself, remember that different people are wired in different ways. People defy categorization, despite the best efforts of those involved in personality typing. Of course, I wouldn’t want to discourage anyone with proper mechanical skills and desire away from a do-it-yourself endeavor. That said, I believe there are certain personality traits and safeguards that compensate for a lack of such skills. These would help a do-it-yourself project in the area of garage doors to be a friendlier undertaking. Taken together, your answers to the questions below will help you evaluate your likelihood of a safe, successful repair.

1. Are you hardly or easily distracted?

Repairing a garage door requires keeping track of the many small parts and fasteners. This is hard for people who become easily distracted to do. Also, distractable people struggle to place the sections appropriately, put fixtures in the right places, hang hardware in the right location, and on and on. Putting parts together the wrong way and having to remove or replace them is a recipe for even more distraction.

2. Do you gravitate toward well-thought-out solutions or quick fixes?

Don’t drive a race car around a track and then come inside and repair a garage door! Those who want instant results have to learn to be patient. Plus, they will need to bear with many small successful steps to achieve the larger goal of garage door repair.

3. Are you an intensely practical person or a lavish, “big-hearted” one?

People who make generous motions without much forward thinking may have to rein in their traits in favor of a more conservative approach. There is little room for actions like “pour all the screws out on the floor, I’ll sort them out later.” In my observation of a garage door replacement, I saw that, for best results, you must lay parts out exactly. Ideally, you will place the parts at the point of their use, so that you will not have to go over the same ground twice to get more parts. You would also need to position a supply vehicle for convenient part access and scrap/recycling. The idea is: save steps and save energy. You will need to retain a good deal of physical and mental alertness, in case a challenging moment occurs later in the procedure.

4. When you read instructions, do you consider them lifelines or guidelines?

If you are the latter, don’t try to replace garage door springs! The energy garage door springs release if they are mishandled can injure or even kill you. Of course, there are ornamental options with doors, but generally, you must follow every step of the directions. And you could hardly rest at night knowing your door is beautifully ornamented but non-functional.

You can find the rest of this post at Intangible Tools For Residential Garage Door Repair, Part 2.

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