Yesterday Kathy went out to a stitchery get-together with friends. The garage door opened and closed fine. Katie came home from work for lunch and again things worked fine. I drove her back to work so I would have the car and no problem with the garage door. Upon my return I left the car in the garage and went into the house to do some computer work. Finally at about 4 PM Katie called me to pick her up from work. I went downstairs and push the door button and POP! Nothing happened – the garage door didn’t open.
I looked at the door mechanism and immediately saw that both door springs had broken. Now if you know anything about garage doors springs, they are not small, instead they are massive twisted coils about three feet long and I have two of them. So now I’m stuck… the car is in the garage and the door is down. I unlocked the door from the door opener track and attempted to lift it. I couldn’t budge it. I’m getting older and have less strength, but that door was heavy, very heavy. I tried and tried to lift it and nada, nothing. All the while I know that Katie is waiting at work for me and there is no way to get in touch with her. She doesn’t have her cell phone, I do. Luckily my next door neighbor and his two sons came out while I was puzzling over what to do next and they helped me lift the door open. Next I called a garage door repair service and schedule them to come out. These door springs are not for amateurs. They said they’d be there about 8 PM. Next I phoned Kathy and told her of the problem since I was expecting about a $200 charge. Then I left to pick up a slightly annoyed Katie who had phoned her mother and learned of my problem.
Back home and at 7 PM the repair guys arrived. The two guys said that I should get the entire door rebuilt replacing all the glide wheels and bearings for only $699. Sheesh. If I only did the springs it would be $470. So I told them to go ahead and do the big job. I didn’t watch them and I should have, because when they finished I notice that one of the door panels was now bent. Complaining about it they took $100 off, but with tax it was still $649.44. Sheesh again! It seems that the house is falling apart now that it’s ten years old. However the door is working and it’s much quieter now.