Are Renovations Your Best Choice?
If you are planning home renovations, there is probably a large list of tasks already. If your garage doors need attention, it could well be that attempting to repair it and bring it back to its former glory will be more costly than simply replacing it.
There’s plenty to consider when prioritising your list.
Will renovations give you the desired result?
The basic layout of your house may well be sufficient for your needs. Any renovations you go with will simply re-finish or add/divide rooms. One of the larger expenses in renovations is refurbishing the outside. A garage door can make up a considerably part of the front or side face of a house. Simply patching and repainting it may not fix up all the problems. This is especially true if the door has trouble opening or closing.
Is your home older than 30 years?
There’s no doubt that building standards and materials safety have improved in more recent times. If your home was built before 1980, there are some areas you need to pay close attention to when planning renovations.
- Asbestos – The dangers of asbestos were being warned about in the 1950s. It wasn’t until 1985 that a health claim was successful in Australia. This saw a rapid spread of the banning of its use in buildings. Asbestos needs to be disposed of safely as it poses a serious health risk to you and your family.
- Damp – the treatment of potential damp risks on buildings has also improved. With older houses, holding back rising damp (water leaking.seeping up from under the house) was done with inferior materials. Rising damp can cause cracking and timber rot in the supporting components of your house.
- Older electrical cabling – insulation shielding does begin to degrade over time, making electrical circuits dangerous – especially when they are disturbed with renovations. Insects and rodents can also cause issues.
- Aged plumbing – a common problem with renovations. Older dwellings may still have clay or even lead piping. Some older copper piping may also have been sealed using lead based solder. Clay pipes are surprisingly easy to crack when disturbed…meaning you will need to replace a whole waste line. Asbestos is also a risk, as some waste pipes were made out of it as well.
Garage door renovations
With older garage doors, the open/close mechanism still being used in the eighties was based around a large spring. Ageing springs can be very dangerous if the are corroded or weakened. The older doors were also made of quite heavy material, making modern open/close systems difficult and expensive to find.
Given that your garage door is such a large part of the curb appeal of your house, it may be worth talking to us about what a replacement would cost you.
