Our Favourite Transformation Of The Year*

A few weeks ago, we finally finished replacing our garage roof and we’re still ecstatic with how it turned out. We still keep showing our before and after pictures to anyone and everyone – whether they’re interest or not! We’re so proud of what we’ve achieved – but there is one thing that’s been bugging us.

Yes, it’s the ugly garage door.

Not long after moving into our home, we tried to make the garage door look and function a bit better by cleaning, scrubbing, greasing and painting it, but it didn’t really help much, especially as the paint started to flake again not long after we painted it.

Now, with our amazing new garage roof finally finished, we once again decided to try to salvage the old door. But after stripping back all of the old paint, we realised that no matter how much work we put into sorting the existing door, it was never going to look right. I guess you just have to learn when to cut your losses, so we decided to start from scratch and install a new door.

The old, existing door had been badly fitted and after removing it, we realised that the door wasn’t the only thing that wasn’t in a good condition – all of the timber framework supporting the door (and supporting part of the garage roof!) had rotted away! Needless to say, we’d not expected things to be in such a bad condition.

So, before we could even think about fitting the door, we ended up having to rebuild all of the studwork first.

When choosing the garage door, we’d already assumed that we’d have to adjust the size of the existing opening slightly to fit the new door, but starting from scratch definitely wasn’t something we’d anticipated – especially as it turned out that the old woodwork was just stood on the soil and not on a solid base.

We ended up laying new foundations, building the new framework and were up till late in the night trying to attach everything to the brickwork when it was finally time to hang the new garage door…

… or so we thought!

We positioned the door in the opening and then it suddenly dawned on us. We’d calculated everything with the wrong measurement! Needless to say, this wasn’t one of our DIY highlights. By this point it had already been dark for hours, it was cold (who in their right mind would tackle outdoor projects in the middle of November?!) and I’d long since lost the feeling in my frozen toes.

I can’t even begin to tell you how miserable it was to find that the door wouldn’t fit. Luckily there is a happy end and it turns out that fitting a door is actually really easy!

We can’t wait to share the results with you next week! (Spoiler: It looks amazing!) And, we have a little surprise, too! Oh, and if you really can’t wait to see more, here’s a sneak peek of the door we’ve chosen.

Have you ever replaced a garage door? Or any other door for that matter? Replacing the garage roof and door is definitely our favourite transformation of the year. What was yours? We’d love to hear what your favourite projects were!

*Disclosure: This post is in collaboration with Homebase, but all opinions are of course our own. Thank you for supporting the brands that support Little House On The Corner.