Non opening garage doors?

[shoot summ]

I have an older house, 3 car garage with 3 single car doors.

I do keep the wife's car in at night so 1 door is opened and closed many times during a week, and it is the main door I use whenever I am doing something in the garage. Her car always goes out whenever I am working in the garage.

The other 2 doors are never opened, ever. I have stuff stored next to them on the garage side, and also have some things hanging from them. It would take some effort to open them and I have gotten used to the extra "wall space".

So as I am re-arranging a bit and making room for some new machinery I have toyed with the idea of removing the tracks and setting the doors "permanently" and building a nice wood storage rack next to them for my long lumber.

Has anyone done this? I've tried to think of all of the reason I shouldn't, and honestly haven't come up with anything. If you have some good reason you think I shouldn't I'd like to hear that also. We don't plan on moving so resale isn't an issue, I will keep the tracks just in case.

 

[cderalow]

I'd take the horizontals out but leave the verticals and the curved bits.

Maybe even build an actual wall on the inside.

But that's just me.

 

[rwhite692]

Might not be too good for resale value down the road, if that ever becomes a concern.

You might be better off by engineering some shelving that fits up closely to the doors and still allows them to operate. It would be a good idea if that shelving had casters on it.

It is nice to have the option to every so often wheel a lot of the stuff out of the garage, and be able to sweep the area clean, re-organize, etc.

 

[porphyre]

I would not do that - UNLESS you have no next of kin who will have to clean up the mess when you die. You don't plan to move, but getting rid of the house is somebody's responsibility once you're gone.

I'm in this situation. My dad didn't die, but he did suddenly decide to move 600 miles away, so I'm left trying to get rid of his old house full of half completed projects - half reno'd bathroom, 75% finished attic (insulation, subfloor, no drywall or finished floor), 2nd floor exit door w/ no deck - etc etc etc. I could hire out the fixes for $30,000 or do it myself for $10k + a lot of time I don't have.

I'd even suggest that you don't take down the openers. Just unhook them from the door, padlock the door bars and be done with it. Put shelves in front of 'em or something.

 

[shoot summ]

Thanks for the comments, the impact of this is minimal. Take the tracks down, build some brackets that hold the doors in place. Might even incorporate those brackets in to the wood rack. There are no openers.

From a resale perspective it's minimal effort to re-hang the tracks. I had all 3 doors replaced with tracks 10 years ago for $1200, probably $1500-$1600 now for all 3 so not a huge financial issue.

I used to be the king of starting projects, I have changed that now, I am pretty good about only have a couple going at once, too much stress for me otherwise.

As far as cleaning goes my backpack blower does a great job of that without moving a thing.

 

[shoot summ]

Moving forward on this. last weekend a broken torsion spring on the one door we use for the car caused me to start on this. I moved the opener to the center door, it's really nice having the wife's car(and lots of workspace) in the center now. I decided to use unistrut to lock the non-moving doors in place. Did the first one today, lots of extra room without those tracks in the way. I plan to build an overhead shelf for storage containers as well.

I think I am really going to like the way this works out.