Category Archives: Gardening

New Paint To Give Your Garage Door A Facelift

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Our garage doors are always open and exposed to various elements of nature that can cause them to chip, fade, rust, and affect its operation over time. That’s why regular maintenance and protection against these damaging elements are important to keep the door in top working condition. One good way to do it is by painting it new. Here’s a step-by-step tip on how to do the garage door painting right.

Know The Right Timing

When planning for a paint job on your garage, make sure you time it wisely. You want the paint to dry fast and properly, so you’ll need a good temperature for that – not too hot or too cold. Also, always pay attention to the daily weather forecast; you need a couple of days or more of no rain. The best time to start painting is early in the day, so you can get enough sunlight to finish it and dry all in a day.

Ready The Surfaces

This may be the toughest part, but you need to prepare the surface for a good paint job. If you want your paint to last longer, you need to paint right and paint well. First thing you should do is sand off any peeling paint on the surface. For metal garage doors, you need to sand any signs of rust.

Clean

For the paint to stick on the surface well, you’ll need a clean surface. Set a power washer on a low setting or soak a sponge in water with detergent and scrub the surface to clean. Make sure you wash off all the dirt and grime, especially at the bottom, where most gunks tend to build up. Let the surface dry completely before you start painting.

Prepare the Things You’ll Need

Prepare all the things you’ll need before you start painting. It may not seem much, but those extra minutes you spend at the start will make a huge difference in easing up the work later. Keep the siding from getting painted by taping all the edges. Also, lift the door up slightly and lay down a cardboard, plastic, or tarp at the bottom before you put it down back. This will keep the floor of your garage from being tainted with drips and spills.

Apply Primer

If you want to give it a good facelift and a full change of color/s, then you’ll need to apply a coat primer. Make sure you pick a primer that suits for outdoor and is suited for the type surface of your garage door. Cover any metal with premier to protect it from rusting.

Paint

Paint your garage door in thin layers and let each coating dry before applying the next. This shouldn’t be a problem since you’re painting a wide surface, by the time you finish your initial coat on the other side, the other side where you started should be dry. Use a small brush for edges and details, and roller for the wider surface.

Quick Tip

Wait at least 24 hours before after painting before you lift and open the garage door.

Your Interior Doors Can Improve The Design Of Your Home

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Every single one of us wants our home and office to look just right. It’s not always easy to improve the design of your home, but there are some things that you can do that will dramatically improve the design without much effort on your part. The only thing that you need to do is pay close attention to the small yet very important details.

Let’s start off with the doors in your home. Interior doors are a big part of the design of you home. When you have just a plain door it’s not going to take away from the design of your home or office, but it’s not going to be adding anything either. Adding a beautiful interior door is going to drastically improve the overall look that you are going for.

You will find that there are many different styles of interior doors that you will have to choose from and a few different types of material to choose from as well. It’s important that you take your time with your selection. This should be well throughout because it’s an important thing. Here’s why, if you have a country style home putting a modern door in is going to actually make all of your efforts in your design look out of place, and basically it’s not going to complement the design and look bad. I am sure this is something that you are aware of.

The interior door is not the only thing that you are going to need to pay close attention too. There are many other aspects of the door that will add a wonderful look to your door. Of course there are the door handles. This is another area that you are going to want to take your time looking at there are so many different styles and finishes. There are many online companies that you browse through and write down the different model numbers of the ones that are your favorite. This is a great way to make it much easier for you to choose.

There is another piece of door hardware for your interior door that plays a factor in the overall look of your door, and this is the door hinges. I know what you are probably thinking to yourself right now, but trust me on this. The door hinge is important, it’s one of those things that you don’t notice, but if it was ugly you would notice it. You are also going to have many different hinges to choose from as well.

Each and every aspect of interior doors is extremely important. If you want to add to your interior decorating efforts than it’s important that you take your time making your selections. There are plenty of websites that you can look at many different styles of door handles, door hinges and even interior doors.

You are going to be amazed at how much better your interior design is for your home and/or office.

Sliding Garaged Door Versus Side Hinged Garage Door

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If you are looking at replacing your garage door there are a number of options available to you. Theses include the following mechanisms: side hinged, up and over, roller, sliding and sectional. Furthermore, the way that the door functions can be manual or automated and operated with a remote control.

Two of the most popular selections are the side hinged and sliding garage door and there are some good reasons for this. Here is a summary and comparison of how both work

The hinged door, normally supplied in pairs, uses the oldest and most basic opening approach, namely that of having a swinging doorway held on hinges. The doors are normally made of wood and this gives them a unique appearance and it means that they can be painted or treated with preservative. These doors use conventional handles and locks and one door can be opened whilst the other is left closed. They can be repainted, or repaired and the hinges can be changed or replaced.

The sliding garage door mechanism is completely different. The door will be made of metal and it combines tracks and rollers that enable it to slide to one side of the garage opening. The door is not usually a continuous single unit, but rather an interconnected set of panels that bend at their junction and this means that the panels can run on tracks that bend or curve. The advantage of this is that the door can slide to one side of the opening, or even slide away to an adjacent wall (i.e. at 90 degrees to the opening).

A big difference between the two systems is the location of the door when open. With hinges the doors open outwards. This leaves the inside of the garage clear, but it means that any obstruction in front of the entrance will prevent opening.

With the sliding method all that is required is a free wall for the tracking and any obstructions that may be present either side of the doorway do not prevent opening and closing. With home garage doors the door-panel will slide on the inside of the wall.

Another big difference is the potential for motorisation. Side hinged doors can be motorised, but they can be problematic on windy days and the challenge is one of getting both pairs of doors to synchronise perfectly.

With sliding doors motorisation is ideal. The smooth operation of rollers on tracks makes automation simple and this means that remote control operation is generally the best way to operate this opening system. Most home based doors of this type come with motors and remote controls.

Other factors worth consideration are of course cost and maintenance. The traditional wooden pair of doors still work out as the most economic option and they are easy to maintain. There is no complexity to how the hinges work! Periodic painting or treating of the wood is required, but this is a relatively unskilled job.

Sliding doors certainly cost more money, but they are easy to use, easy to automate and they require little in the way of maintenance unless something stops working (which is rare). Most will have a permanent protective coating, so painting is not required and many have insulated panels that help to keep the garage warm.