Well that was a pleasant little gift--or not.

[VintageMusclecar]

I'm on a crash course on garage doors as of this evening--I knew Jack Squat about servicing & maintenance up until now, so please keep that in mind if I seem naive on the subject.

I never knew there were supposed to be cables inside the springs. These are the same springs that were originally installed when we built this garage ~30 years ago.

Apparently there are two grades of door springs, and you need to know the door weight in order to get the correct rated springs. Again--two person job (minimum), so I'm back to my contractor guy for assistance there.

My conundrum is--I'm assuming four decent springs aren't going to be cheap--do I spend $400-$500 or more Band-Aiding the existing situation or drop $1500+ on a new door? I need to do this job right the first time so I don't have to worry about it again in the near future.

Oh, and I wasn't kidding about the shop exterior wall being distorted from the old springs. I took this picture a few years ago to show another friend why installing a heating system was a lost cause until I got the structure itself repaired.



The light you see emanating from around the door (mind you, the door is completely closed in that pic) is from the heat lamp that I have to keep on my air compressor pump in order to get it to start when it drops below about 30° or so.

I have a litany of issues to be addressed around here thanks to 20+ years of previous neglect (NOT on my part, but that's another story). I'm trying to pick them off one at a time as time & resources allow, but for the last ~18 months I've been losing ground.

I won't even go into trying to get my father's house fixed up enough to sell it--between a rock & a hard spot there too, but again, another rant for another time.

It is what it is I suppose. Do the best you can, cross your fingers & hope for the best.

Oh, FWIW--they're calling for more nasty weather to come rolling through here sometime around 3:00 a.m. along with winds up to or beyond 80 MPH, plus we're under a Tornado watch until 5:00 a.m. Maybe mother nature will solve all these problems for me lol (just kidding--a little gallows humor).

More tomorrow--maybe! (lol!)