Missives from the 6th Floor

I've spent a fair bit of time on a ladder in the garage trying to prevent the heavy wooden roll-up doors from falling on my head or my cars.

Who'd have thunk that after twenty years the doors might need new springs?

Or that some of the 3" pulleys might have given up the ghost and need replacement?

Lubrication? Surely none of the moving parts need any.

And of course, low maintenance precludes adjustment of any kind - so the poor opener was yanking on the door as hard as it possibly could (probably necessary, see my note about lubrication) and pile-driving the doors into the ground...

The best part is that two owners ago (maybe it was original, who knows) they lashed two doors together with a 2x4 and put a single opener against the pair. And they didn't even bother to make their hack square to the doors, so one door doesn't quite close unless the other is slammed into the ground.

To top it off, when the last owner replaced the opener he did such a marginal job of mounting it (three drywall screws and three nails with angle iron that's been bent to hell and a wad of duck tape, I kid you not) I'm amazed it hasn't come down yet.

Lowes was having a $59 install special for garage doors, so I'm having them install the one I bought yesterday, and I'll pull down the hack the night before the installer arrives.

Oh, and In order to re-use the current opener I had to hop on Sears' website and order parts - I don't have much positive to say about Sears these days, but they have one of the best parts website I've seen. Thanks to their online diagrams for easy parts identification I had the parts I need ordered inside 10 minutes.

On a simpler note, I swear I've replaced a bakers dozen light bulbs that were just burned out - outside, inside, didn't matter. Where possible I've installed compact fluorescents, but a bunch of the interior lighting is dimmed, and dimmable CFLs are just too rich for my blood.