Garage Door Is Wonderful

OK, I had to share a picture of the supremely awesome garage door on the house I am in the process of moving into (we are currently in the "minor repairs and renovations" phase).



The house itself is, I've learned, a mid century modern ranch, with particular features characteristic of 1950s postwar architecture: large picture windows (on the front and on the side facing the yard/patio), low profile roof, and so on.



I had never really thought much about this style of house, and always sort of fancied myself in some little steep-roofed Victorian, complete with gables and carved balustrades and secret-passage nooks. No idea why, possibly my East Coast origins or the storybooks I read that often featured such houses.

But, I have to say, the whole MCM thing is growing on me. Given my longtime fascination and delight with all things retrofuture, living in a home straight out of the "Our Friend, The Atom" area has its appeal!

Once we get it fixed up nicely I plan on going around and taking photos and captioning them with things like "The World of 2009!", and pointing out things like...oh, the way we have things like nifty flat-screen monitors now, BUT we're also still using things like gas stoves, etc.

Anyway, though, back to the garage door -- this garage door is, as far as I can tell, the house's original door, and they literally don't make them like this anymore (at least not on a "go down to the Home Depot and buy an exact replacement" scale). The challenge in saving it so far has been the fact that the previous owners had converted the garage, probably sometime in the 1960s or 1970s (the house itself was built in 1954), into a family room. And in doing so, they not only nailed the door shut but removed the hinge hardware and put a layer of fiberglass insulation and paneling over the inside surface. So we've been ripping all that out, and if all goes well tomorrow we may actually manage to open the garage door, which will be the first time in decades it's been open.

Which, you know, is kind of cool.

(And, no, I am not going to turn this into an architecture blog or anything, I just figure now and then it is interesting to write about things that are actually sort of physically going on in life, not just things I happen to be thinking about or studying. And there's also a lot about houses that makes me want to wax philosophical for some reason, which I might get into later, but I have been painting most of the day and am completely wiped, so bedtime!)

EDIT: We got it open!! And it works! Yay! Mini-timeline appears below:


Initial state: converted garage. The door is covered on the inside with painted paneling.


We took off the paneling (the guy in the dust mask is Matt, my SO) and found...fiberglass insulation and a giant picture mural thing!


We had to tear down the little workroom on the side of the garage in order to get at the garage hardware. But it's a good thing we did because we found...lots of termite tunnels. We knew there were subterranean termites based on the inspections but it is really good to find where they actually seem to be coming in, so you can plug up their entryway, etc.



Almost there! The hardware has been reattached and is, amazingly, actually functional. And the door itself did not seem to have any termite damage...the termites much preferred the unpainted wood framing that was holding the insulation in, apparently!



....and it's open! Yay! (I have no idea why I am so excited about this door and being able to open it, but, well, I am. :P)