DIY -- Garage Doors

Saturday afternoon our garage door died.  No, not the garage door opener, the garage door.  A cable malfunctioned and it began to lift unevenly, which resulted in one of the panels cracking in half.

Here's a close-up of the crack that extended half-way across our two-car garage.

You know what that meant?  We had to buy a new garage door.  They aren't the cheapest thing at the store and, more than likely, you have to have them delivered.  Yes, we have a new pickup truck, but we still couldn't haul a 16-foot garage door home in the bed, so we had it delivered this afternoon.

The rain that fell all day let up and my husband was able to tackle a large portion of the project this afternoon.

And who do you suppose was his doting assistant?

The woman who is five months pregnant with his son.

Me.

Check us out!  This is while we were taking out the old door.  I am excellent at holding things up and following verbal cues.

The weather was great for being outside all evening.  The only drawback was that I'd had an incredibly hectic day at work and wanted nothing more than to lounge on the couch.

Fortunately, once we got the old door and hardware down, there was a bit of downtime -- for me.  I kept the hubs entertained with my witty banter and thrilling conversational skills.

My hard-working man!  Sorry for the blurry photo -- taken with my Android.

I was really able to utilize my skill of holding things steady while he worked.  I'm contemplating adding that to my list of special skills on my resume.

The first panel is in place!

When I told the gals at work what we planned to do this evening, they gave me funny looks and reminded me that I'm growing a person in my uterus (like I'd forget!).  Here's what I have to say about that...

Pregnancy does not make me handicapped.  I am still an able-bodied person and I know my limitations.  If you want to offer me help, awesome.  If I ask for help, realize that I'm not being lazy.  Our garage door wasn't going to replace itself and I don't want to park in the driveway forever. 

View from my seat on the driveway.  Isn't my husband handsome?

All right, moving off of my soap box...

Our new garage door is a serious improvement over the last one.  This one does not have windows.  Our old one had cracked windows that were painted over on the front and duct taped on the back (see first photo).  Taking that particular panel down was a bit of a hazard, as the door-cracking incident cracked the windows further.

The panels are almost up!

Putting up a garage door is a strange process.  The panels are installed before the track hardware they move in.  It seemed a bit backward to me.  As I blog this, the hubs is still in the garage installing the tracks.  I've instructed him to call if he requires first aid or needs me to dial 911.

It feels really good to be able to do a lot of these home improvement projects ourselves.  First of all, it saves us a boat load of money since we aren't hiring an overpriced "professional" to do the job.  Second, we got to spend the evening together working on our home instead of watching television or something mundane.

Here's the garage in spring 2009 just before we purchased our home.  The top panel is the one that cracked and the second panel from the top is the one made of glass.

And here it is today!  At the time this photo was taken, we had been working on the garage for more than three hours.  There's still a bit of work to be done (including a huge clean-up tomorrow evening), but it's definitely coming along.  Doing home improvement projects yourself definitely makes you feel good about yourself and your home.