Arlene has been wanting a garage door opener in Casco. Well, since we don’t have a usable garage in Newton (there’s one taking up a third of the basement level, but there’s no driveway to it) it would have to be in Casco. When we get there late at night, in the dark and cold and weather, it would be nice not to have to get out of the car, fumble for keys (I’ve learned to find the key before getting out of the car), and look for the lock in the dark.
At any rate, Arlene’s brother got us an opener for a present. I started to try to install it a few weeks ago and determined that the door was too close to the ceiling for the opener to fit. We got Steve, the guy who installs garage doors for Sears, to come out and look at it. He said that yes, firstly the door was the wrong size for the opening, and secondly the tracks were the wrong kind, and indeed there was no way to put an opener on that door. He could get us a new door, put in new tracks, and install the opener for us, for about three times what the opener had cost.
So he was back this past Saturday. We expected him at 7 AM so I set the alarm for 6. I had just got to the kitchen and rolled up the blind at 6:50. Nicole was already up. She had a better view out the window than I did and said, “Someone’s here.” It was Steve and his assistant. It took the two of them three hours and five minutes, from 6:50 to 9:55, to remove the old door, remove the old tracks, put in new tracks, put in the new door, install the opener, test it, get me to program the controls, and tell me how to use it. I was amazed at the efficiency. Here’s what it looks like now:
Yes, lots of snow. Those poor guys were working down there with the door wide open a lot of the time. The temperature was in the 20s outside. They said it wasn’t bad, this was the only heated garage they had been working in all week.