I know it’s been discussed here from time to time. But, does anyone have plans or instructions on taking a standard, flush panel steel door and applying rails, stiles, and panels to the exterior for a carriage house style look?
I plan on buying a flush panel, insulated steel door and doing the “decoration” myself.
#1 reason, the challenge
#2 Reason, the money
Any advice on adhesives, hardware, watchouts, etc would be appreciated.
thanks all!
Replies
I looked into doing the same and don't really have answers. One thing you might want to consider is the final weight of the door. The door company told me their wood garage doors required more powerful openers and hardware because of the weight.
I'd love to hear how it turns out. I am about a year away from needing to build some too. I am considering building either roll up carriage house looking doors or true carriage house swinging doors.
Does anyone have a source for carriage door hinges?
The weight is not an issue. The wound springs above the door take up the weight. Without the springs, there is no garage door opener or human that could open even a light weight door.
Hal
http://www.rivercitywoodworks.com
...dunno what that's about, but yes, there are many ways without wound springs.
It was a reply to the guy that said a larger garage door opener would be needed because of the additional weight.
Hal
I have made three sets from scratch, and find it pretty easy and quick.
Horizontal panels are made as a stress-skin assembly, using 5/4 pine edges and a bridging as the core, then 1/4" luan as the inside skin, and 3/8" grooveless roughsawn cedar plywood on the outside. I have also used MDO as the exterior skin. 3/4" trim boards are pinned and glued to the outside face to do the stile and rail accents.
When all made and painted, I call my garage door guy, who comes out with all the hinges, fittings, tracks, springs, operators, etc., and pops them up in a couple hours.
Gene, You don't happen to have a photo or two of those doors. I am designing my new shop and home to build next spring and I would like to build my own carriage style doors as well.Brian
Here are a few pics. The without-lites doors are 7090 in size, and the small door is on a garden shed and motorcycle garage. I snapped a pic of the small door when overhead. It is a three-section . . . the others are four sections each.
Here is a picture of some that I just built. They swing open on flush mount hinges so not sure you could put these on an opener.These are made with clear redwood. 4 layers of wood overall. Rabbeted at the "center" stiles so they close easilyEdited 12/1/2006 7:46 pm ET by gizmodyne
Edited 12/1/2006 10:08 pm ET by gizmodyne
What a great time for me to join this forum, I'm a craftsman in Washington. I happen to specialize in carriage doors (authentic mind you). To be perfectly honest with everyone, I would reccomend building the real deal. It's so simple, and the finished product will be the highlight of your home. The fake rollups just have never cut it for me. Nor should they for you.
If anyone has any questions on carriage doors or their construction, I'd be happy to assist. I have countless pictures of past projects, so just let me know.
-Andy
Could you post some pictures and provide some general construction and material details?
Gene and Gizmo, Thanks for sharing the photos. I am just getting the ideas going so those help.Andy, I'd love to see a couple of photos as well. I assume by "the real thing" you mean doors that swing out. If so, is there an automatic opener for that style of door? I don't think I can convince my wife to get out in the rain or WI snow to open the garage door. Or are you refering to the kind of door that swings up? What kind of pivots, springs etc. do you recommend? Thanks for the help,
Brian
Edited 12/2/2006 7:49 pm ET by BrianF
yes, there is a way to modify a genie opener that should work beautifully. Here, have a look at these:
by simply reversing the polatrity of the motor and making it push rather than pull then attaching mounting points at the inside top of each door, you've got an automated opener my friend. You can just use angle iron to go from the opener track mount point to the doors. I will try to draw this up to explain it better. This will however, no doubt void warranties, but works beautifully.
Someone asked about materials, and all I have to say is that you can't go wrong with CVG Fir. I would reccomend using 2x6 and 2x8s. The key is in design. It's important for your bottom rails to be bigger than both the middle and tops, so your eyes follows movement up the door to the mullions. For example, your bottom rail should be a glued up tight grain 11" 2x, the mid should be 7 1/2 and the top, 5 1/2. I would love to help with anyone who has specific design questions. Keep them coming.
Building new carriage doors for the shop will be one of my winter projects. I have ~500 bf of old redwood I'm planning to use for the face, with a doug fir frame.
I like the look of the hinges that you use, but I'm nervous about them because I've got an entire woodshop on the other side of the doors. Just seems too easy to unbolt the hinges. What would you suggest?
Second, my opening will be about 90" x 11' so it seems two doors will be too big. I'm thinking bi-folds will be a better bet. Have you ever built any of these? What would you recommend for hardware?
I've been planning on building some carriage house type doors, more for the idea of insulating them than for the looks. For example, trying to use some rigid insulation (not sure on the thickness, 1" up to 3") sandwiched in. But as I see some of the examples out there I'm wondering about combining a great looking door with one that is insulated really well too. Any ideas on something that's insulated well AND looks great?
yes, deffinately. Insulating is super easy with carriage doors. You can route in your cedar panels from the back side, then when they're in, cover them with a sheet of insulation, followed by cedar. This will hold the back of the door about three quarters out from the face, but looks great, let me find a picture here, This door is insulated to R7, that's about the limit when considering the glass (you will loose more heat out of your glass, so insulating any further than that simply isn't efficient). Does that make sense? Each layer of insulation is about R3 and in addition, you can rabbit in insulated glass to add another coulple points.
Thanks for the info and pics (especially). On this last picture you showed I can see what you meant about the insulation sandwiched with the cedar. Do you use door hardware similary to french door hardware (e.g. bolts for the stationary door, astragal, etc.)? Also, just an aside, I'm not too familiar with door vocabulary and am wondering if "carriage house" style always refers to doors with window at the top. Thanks for you time....
no, lites aren't a requisite for carriage doors. The most common craftsman traditional style pieces will tend to have a single row, but your imagination is the limit.
I am impressed and inspired by those doors. I like the way you added the insulation layer into the door. I would love to see a quick sketch of how you re-rig the openers to push open the doors. I can handle reversing the polarity to get the opener to push, bu tsome help with the engineering of the mechinism would be very helpfull. I am on the road right now and I'll look like a genius when I come home and tell my wife that I have the garage doors mostly figured out!! Thanks a lot for sharing your expertise!Brian
Since you offered.............. I've got plans in the works to build a set of doors. Been researching hinges & found a lot of expensive hardware out there. I'm figuring on three hinges for each door (approx 4' X 7'). Do I need the $100+/ea variety with long strap or will common heavy duty hinges (something like 10" T hinge) work?
The doors I have hanging (as you can see in the picture) are on 8" strap hinges. No sagging so far with a 4'6" x 7' door. Finehomebuilding had a great article on sandwich style doors that inspired the design of my doors.
honoestly, that shouldn't be any problem. I've used a set of three STANDARD hinges for a door that weighed approx. 130 pounds. Strap hinges are great, but find out what the load reccomendations are on the hinges... divide the door weight by three and if that's less, you're golden.
The only problem I see would be eventual sagging of the frame from being hinged in only three places, but we're talking years.
howdy,any thoughts on this design i made?....haven't built them yet. hope you don't mind my asking.
yeah, that looks great, you've got the basic idea. THe only thing I might reccomend would be varying the widths of your horizontal rails. As I said before, this really helps move your eye up the door and gives them a flow that's just not there with the same widths.
thanks gene.
any issues with wood movement due to weather?The doors look great!
I too have "build new garage doors" on my winter to-do list and have been looking for plans and pointers.
Over on the Breaktime board, I found a pointer to a FHB article by Scott McBride ("Custom Doors, Made Easy") where he shows his way of sandwiching together layers to build carriage doors. The article was a bit on the thin side, but I liked his layering approach and how he used pocket screws to build the core. His approach lends itself to building insulated doors, which is something I was looking to do.
The article originally appeared in the Dec 2004/Jan 2005 issue. Reprints are available for a few bucks at the FHB site.
Here is a link to how one company builds their doors - looks like a reasonably straightforward sandwich approach (though I'd go with M&T rather than dowels!):
http://www.designerdoors.com/download/pdfs/DesignerDoors-Entrada.pdf
And, for design ideas, their catalog of doors:
http://www.designerdoors.com/download/pdfs/DesignerDoors-Overview.pdf
eh, not a fan of designer doors, a major competitor also. I just don't understand why no one is willing to build these properly... it's really pretty simple.
Sorry, I didn't realize and certainly wasn't touting your competition. As a DYI I'm more interested in "borrowing" any good ideas out there to build my own.
"...willing to build these properly..."
I want to learn, and appreciate your advice.
I need insulation so am planing on going with the foam core with plywood (1/4"?) on both sides (fir frame - M&T!). Plywood glued and screwed to the frame. Am I on the right track here? Any upgrades or course corrections you'd suggest?
that would work, structurally, the ply will provide tons of sheer, but it's about whether you want a door with plywood on it. I would reccomend either daddoing in your panels or routing them in from the back (either a raised panel or cedar) and then covering the back with a layer of insulation with cedar and trim over the top to hide it.
I've done both, but would certainly reccomend putting your insulation panel on the back of the door for a double layer, or flush with the back for a single.
You clearly are at the right spot at the right time - looks like a lot of us are thinking of the same thing for our garages, shops, etc. I'm OK with building the doors - I'm interested in automatic door openers to placate my wife.
You said to reverse the direction of a typical door opener like Genie. How do you link the two doors to one opener? Can you give us a little more detail?
Thanks - this is a great thread and I'm glad you came along!
Ed
Guys, I'd love to tell you the Genie secret, but to be honest, I need to exercise some caution on this subject. We are the only people I know of that have succesfully done this, and from a business sense, I have to keep it that way.
What I can tell you is that once you're over the polarity issue, the mounting is really the easy part. Let me think about what I'm willing to share, and I will happily post some more info.
thanks all, more to come later.
Andy
My old house was complete with a carriage house. It's doors were vertically planked, T&G IIRC, on a pretty hefty 'frame'. They were suspended on wheels which (after I repaired them) allowed the doors to be opened similar to pocket doors. The track (metal 1/2 round) and supporting structure were entirely inside the building. Of course that may not work for you. ;-)
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled