Garage Doors - The Windows to my ... Cars?

Perhaps the beginning of the garage door decision began long ago, but admittedly I was not actually aware of it.  I personally did not have a preference between two single garage doors or two.  I just knew that I wanted a more over-sized garage.  But I had not idea what a 'typical' sized garage was or typical sized garage doors were.  Luckily, the right person knew these things...my architect, Tom McDonough.

In the house design process, the first drawings back from your architect are so overwhelming, interesting, and amazing...I  found myself focused on the parts of the house where I thought I had more experience and opinions--kitchen, bathrooms, etc.  My eyes and brain flew by the garage size or the door design.  

Size of the Garage and Garage Doors

Our architect designed the house with two separate garage spaces (one for us, one for my parents) and each garage space has two different garage doors (for you math buffs, that makes 4 garage doors, 4 openers).  So there are cost savings between having one double door vs. two single doors.  Also, if you have living space above a garage, like we do on one side, increasing or decreasing garage space can have a profound impact on cost.  Finished living space is very expensive, so a small garage width increase can add up quickly in the finished living space above the garage.

Second, and while this may sound obvious (okay, does sound obvious), garage size is measured both in terms of width and depth and  ceiling height.  It was very helpful to measure our current garage dimensions to see how the new design is going to ROCK OUR WORLD!   We are getting an extra four feet longer!

Finally, I guess I assumed that garages came in two sizes...single door and double door.  Like a queen and king size bed.  Again, WRONG.

While I am sure that there are many options, it was explained to me that there are two main options for garage door width - 8 feet and 9 feet.  Our architect picked 9 feet without our prompting or asking, and God Bless Him for doing it!  I didn't realize that it was an upgrade until we actually met with the garage door company to make selections.  Perk!

You can also pick out garage door height.  Again, something that I thought was standard but, now looking back, I realize that I have never really thought about it before.  I was told that garage doors in the new house are 8 feet tall, not the standard 7 feet.  Awesome!

Trim

As I mentioned before, we decided to not have windows in the garage doors because both garages already had two windows installed.  I emailed Max from J.S. Robinson to ask an embarrassing question...what sort of options are there for a garage door.  Basically, I wanting to be able to think about the options (translation, google and pinterest the options) before the meeting.  Max was ON IT and told me that the main thing we would pick out would be trim styles and then sent me a file with the potential trim styles.

We selected metal doors with trim to be applied to the outside. The options seemed endless for trim design...should they be a square, an X, a large X, two small X's, arched top...

Completely overwhelmed, I emailed our architect who got me on the right path.  He was sweet enough to narrow it down. Then we chose from there!  Who knew that would be so challenging! 

Color

Most people paint their garages, so I thought this would be an easy decision.  It generally was, but two things came up that I found helpful to know:

• If you know the color you are going to paint your doors, you may choose a steel color that is close to the painted color.  It will help hide any chipping in the future.  Clever!
• Wood garage doors are extremely expensive, warp over time, and are expensive (did I mention they are expensive)?  A lot of people choose to have their steel doors faux finished to look like wood.  They really look so good that it is hard to tell--basically, you get the benefits of steel with the look of wood.  However, most faux finish painters want the steel to be white and not wood-colored.

Muscle - Chain vs. Belt

What about the muscle to lift the doors?  It is a much bigger concern for us considering that we have a guest bedroom over one of the garages.  I did not even realize that there was a difference between belt and chain.  Check out this video to hear the noise difference between the two!  VIDEO

Hardware

I was not sure what type of hardware would even go on a garage door.  As expected, there are a TON of options!  The nice thing about the selection was that it did not have to happen now (phew!).  Our garage door company wisely suggested waiting until we picked out the exterior lighting and match the style/finish.

Insulation

Since garage doors have never been my focus, I just looked at them as metal things that went up and down.  I never went and inspected garage doors.  A co-worker of mine mentioned to me that she had to switch up to insulated garage doors because her master closet was over the garage and never stayed warm enough.  Given that we have our upstairs guest room over one of our garages, I was expecting to pay to upgrade the doors.  Luckily for us, J.S. Robinson included insulated doors in our base price, so no upgrade required.  I know I keep saying it, but man, it is really awesome to have a builder that does not select all low-end selections in the base price.