Question:
Going to convert a two car residential garage space into a shop. Looking to
replace the current garage door. It's a two car size door (16 wide x 7'
high, I think). It's a roll-up door on tracks. The problem is that I lose
all my high ceiling overhead space, because the tracks come back 9' into the
garage.
I can't change it to a commercial type door that rolls into a cylinder at
the top because there isn't any clearance at the top of the door for that.
Does somebody manufacture a sliding door perhaps?
Answer:
I guess this suggestion might depend on how far you are willing to
go. That is like a 2 car garage with 2 separate doors, say 7' X 7' each,
with a standard 18" centre post (maybe less). You could either
"dummy" one door, or just fix it so that it won't open. Then you will
have the overhead clearance you require for well over 3/4 of the floor
space. (Just draw it up, and you will see that is so. A garage is
usually about 21 feet 'long', and one door will only 'cover' the floor
space for 7' X 7' when raised.)
Faced with the same problem, I went with a single panel tilt-up
door. When it is up, it extends only 4' into the shop, and there
is no mounting hardware permanently in the space. I found
heavy duty hardware at the local garage door company. Getting
the door balanced was a trial and error process. I built a cross-braced
douglas fir frame with resawn 1x8 douglas fir boards (i.e. the door
is heavy), but it is easy to open and close.
My father-in-law solved the problem differently: he put two
outswinging shed doors on his garage so that he could maximize
storage space in the overhead area.
