My House is 72 this year. The garage door is original to the house and so smooth on its rails that my 8 year old can open and close it. The picture above was day one of sanding. I finished painting the primer. I put a new seal on the bottom, and I’m planning to put a second seal on the header because mice from the woods love to go after my bird seed.

I remember my Grandfather painting this door, the house used to have wooden siding and he would paint half the house every summer. This door had not been done in at least 10 years and was really having some issues with peeling, though I think its location has kept it pretty safe from rain and rot.

The left and right corners don’t sit flush on the ground and I attempted to fix them with a cushion weather strip. That worked, but caused me two problems. The first is the lock was now too high to latch. The second is the mounting bracket and the rubber are too fat in the tight door frame so every time the door is opened completely, it gets stuck when you try to close it.

Since the side framing is so tight, I think I’m left with only one real option which is to go back to the old school flat weather strip. This will still leave the left and right corners open to mice and squirrels. So I’m going to test if the door will shut and lock with about 18 inches of the cushion strip mounted to the ground. It shouldn’t interfere with cars, bikes, or foot traffic, but it will hopefully seal up those gaps from the animals.

The last step is my wife wants to paint it a turquoise color, but getting the exposed wood finished was my priority. The blue will be much later, possibly even next spring.

I was really hoping to have this completed by now, but at least it looks really nice.

~~Miniwing~~
Investor, Stoic, Parent