Kansas City has a lot of garages that were built for wood doors, and a lot of owners who still want that look. OnPoint Pro Doors Kansas City installs real wood, composite and wood-look steel carriage-house doors, and explains plainly how each one copes with the humid summers and the ice. Measuring and the free estimate come first.
Tell us what's happening. Free estimate, nothing owed.
Some owners want real wood and nothing else, and for a house where the garage is part of the character of the street, that can be the right call. Cedar and similar species take stain beautifully and can be built to match a design that no factory line offers.
Others want the look without the yearly attention. Composite doors are molded with a convincing grain, don't absorb water and hold paint for years. Wood-look steel puts a grained, factory-finished skin over a steel door, usually insulated, and from the street it passes for stained wood. All three come in carriage-house designs.
The choice usually comes down to two questions: how much upkeep you are willing to take on each year, and whether the garage shares a wall with living space that would benefit from insulation.
Wood moves with the air around it. Through the humid summer months it takes on moisture and swells, and through the dry cold of winter it gives it back and shrinks. Each swing works at the joints and the finish, and a door that fit snugly in March can rub its stops in August.
Ice is the other test. Freezing rain that runs under the door soaks the bottom rail, and water that gets past a worn finish into the end grain is where wood doors begin to rot. A real wood door here is a door whose finish gets renewed every few years and whose bottom edge and seal get looked at every fall. We talk through that upkeep before you choose.
A carriage-house door borrows its look from the swing-out doors of old coach houses: a center seam, vertical boards or cross bucks, and often a row of windows across the top. In practice it is a sectional door that rolls up on tracks and runs on a regular opener.
The handles and strap hinges are decorative, fixed to the face, and never move. On the older streets, square windows above a cross-buck panel suit the houses well; on a newer subdivision, a simpler board pattern with a plain window row often looks better.
Windows can be clear, frosted or seeded. Frosted and seeded glass let daylight into a garage used as a workshop while keeping the contents out of view from the street.
Wood is heavy, and so is an insulated steel door. The springs are sized to the new door's actual weight once it's hung, never copied from the old springs, so the door lifts easily by hand and stays put halfway.
If the current door is a Wayne Dalton with its spring inside the tube, a new carriage door can use the same kind of system or a standard torsion spring above the opening. The difference is explained before you decide, along with whether the opener can handle the new door or needs an upgrade.
The spring storm season tests a carriage door in two ways. Hail lands hardest on the face, and solid wood takes a dent wherever a stone strikes, while a heavier steel skin with a grained finish tends to hide the smaller marks. Wind is the other test: a wide carriage door on a two-car garage catches a gust across its whole face, so double-wide doors carry reinforcing struts where the maker specifies them.
If a section is ever damaged, current composite and steel carriage lines can usually take a replacement section. A custom wood door is a different matter, since a damaged panel often means a carpenter rather than a part off the shelf.
On split-levels and ranches with a bedroom or family room beside or over the garage, an insulated carriage door in wood-look steel or composite keeps those rooms more comfortable through the hot summers and the ice-storm winters. It also runs quieter, which is noticed most at night.
An insulated door only works as well as its seals, so a new bottom seal and weatherstripping on the sides and top go on with every install.
Garages tucked under a split-level often have little room above the opening, and a carriage door can be ordered with a low-headroom track so it still clears the ceiling.
Carriage and wood doors are built to order, so this is the order things happen in.
Many newer subdivisions on both sides of the state line have associations with rules on door style and color, and some ask for approval before a new door goes up. It is worth checking before ordering, and we can provide the details the association usually wants to see.
Colors are chosen outside, from samples, because a stain that looks warm in a showroom can look very different against red brick in the afternoon light.
It can be, with a finish renewed every few years and the bottom rail watched closely. Wood swells in the humid months and shrinks in the dry cold.
Composite is molded to look like wood and doesn't absorb water; wood-look steel puts a grained finish on a steel skin, usually with insulation behind it.
No. It looks like swing-out doors but rolls up in sections on tracks like any other garage door.
It can use the same kind of tube system or a standard torsion spring above the opening. The difference is explained before you choose.
It is checked against the new door's weight before ordering, and an upgrade is recommended only if it would struggle.
Yes. Composite and wood-look steel carriage doors are commonly insulated, which helps rooms beside or above the garage.
Steel and composite carriage doors with a grained finish hide small hail marks well. Solid wood dents where a stone lands, and wide doors get struts to resist the wind.
Yes. Samples, measuring and the free estimate all come before anything is ordered.
We need three things: a name, a number, and what the door is doing. Everything before you agree to it asks nothing of you, across the whole of Jackson County.
Quicker to talk? Call (816) 315-5261.
Tell us what's happening. Free estimate, nothing owed.