Cheapo gator grip socket on your impact makes short work of those pesky old school square nuts. Also I'd guess the extension springs from that old wooden door aren't correct for that steel backed insulated door. The new door should have stickers on the edge that has the weight of it. Just match your extension spring pair to that number. Also the pulleys are pretty typical wear items, cheap and easy to zip a set on during install. And a good practice to run a safety cable through center of extension spring so when it breaks it doesn't smoke your car, wall or something worse.

I love This Old House and Ask This Old House and have loads of respect for the people on the shows. That being said, as a garage door professional, there are a bunch of things on this install that were not done properly which should be mentioned. 1. The old tracks were re-used which voids any manufacturer warranty. NEVER re-use the old tracks. 2. The old tracks are low headroom tracks, used when you have less than 12" of headroom above your door. Low headroom track requires a special bottom bracket where the cable runs on the outside of the track. You can see the bracket at the 1:36 mark on the video. Nathan uses a standard bottom bracket which you can see at 3:21. This brackets runs the cable on the inside of the track. 3. While the door was properly leveled and shimmed, the tracks were not. They should be. 4. The reason the top brackets did not work is because they are meant for standard lift track. The brackets he “salvaged” off the old door are the proper brackets needed for low headroom track applications. 5. Garage doors a drawbar type opener should have a special brace across the top of the door. It is referred to as a strut. Without a strut, the top section of this door will crack in the center within 2-5 years due to simple metal fatigue from the steel flexing. With a strut, it will not crack. 6. Since the wrong bottom brackets were used, the lift cables will rub on the edge of track as the door gets to the totally open position and break pre-maturely. Any other garage door professional who reads what I have said will agree. We see this type of installation far too often. A properly installed garage door will work safely for many years. The door installed on this episode is NOT installed properly. They should have a professional garage door technician fix the mistakes.

Beautifull work very nice and clean

I love her face of excitement...😱

Nathan is the man.

I grew up with my father watching this old house and I like it to learn something new these days

Old wooden garage door brought back a memory of my old door crashing down on top of my 63 Corvette Split window, car was fine oddly but the door never gave a hint it was so rotten!

Good job, Nathan! You make it look easy.

You were smart to re use the Chamberlain opener.

great job!

Great job 👍

Love this old house, Love Nathan, especially Tommy

@This Old House Do you have a video about converting a garage that was converted into a living space back into a garage? Basically we have a wall were the garage door used to be and we want to revert it back into a garage.

What about the opening at the bottom now because of needing to shim to level?

Excellent!

Very helpful. 5 more seconds when he was running the safety cable through the retention plate and we would have seen how he finished the "knot" tie off.

Some observations need to be addressed. What about the fact that they had to raise the door on the facing right side and that left a gap. Did they install the bottom moulding to make a seal? A sloped drive like that and no drail will potentially funnel water into the garage. Secondly, thieves know to reach in at the top and hook the release pull rope. Always install a barrier to prevent this.

Great video, love all the keyboard rambos.. what's wrong with reusing old hinge plates?? Nor like they where rusty..he did use new rollers..😊

I agree with Richard, you forgot to show balancing the door.

For the automatic opener, you first have to open and close the door manually without the opener attached, to see if it’s going light enough. It looks like they went from solid wood to some vinyl material so possibly the springs are way too strong. Then the automatic opener will be under a lot of tension all the time, making it fail sooner than intended. And also the open and close positions may have to be reprogrammed as apparently the new door is shorter.

Rarely do projects like this go as smoothly as this one. I'm in the middle of changing my own old door panels with new ones and have a lot of questions and issues. I've learned more about garage door installation than I ever wanted to know but not enough to finish the project. It would have been helpful to know why the roller brackets are different sizes (as was pointed out by the homeowner) and which tube the roller goes into if there are two, and if the installer explained the difference between the two types of top brackets that he had to swap out. My rudimentary understanding is that the new replacement bracket was for a standard track and the original bracket that he ended up using was for a low overhead track.

Hey Nathan great video, idon't get the name of your tool coverd/taped, I am a black and yellow tool guy too.

The replacement job is incompete and actually quite dangerous. Let me explain with questions and a safety action. a) Is the new door heavier or lighter than the old door? Normally the door vendor supplies matching springs corresponding to the door weight. And for replacement springs, you may notice that part of the replacement coil spring is sprayed with colored paint to indicate the pounds per inch of pull. (red, yellow, or other color) for 10lb/inch, 20lb/inch etc. b) Springs that are 10 years old may snap soon after the new installation. If someone is in the garage when a spring snaps, and they are hit by the recoil, that could mean death, or major crippilng damage. c) For minimum safety, here is what you should do to complete the repair. 1) Match the spring force to the door weight. It may mean replacment springs or adding an inner spring to the one that is there. Best to get the proper spring to mach the door weight. 2) Pass a strong unstranded steel (or with few strands), cable, through the interior of the spring. Hook and anchor one end where the spring is anchored. and let the other end be tied to the closed door frame or thereabouts. It should not snag with the pully. It does not need much tension, just enough to keep it from snagging during door operation. Do it for both sides. When a spring snaps (door closed position), it can sever a persons head. Make sure that cable is not going to snag the door and spring pully operation during normal operation. Benefit = Safety ============ Now, if the spring snaps, or the door pully cable snaps, the in-spring cable will limit the spring's free end travel, and limit the wiplash from the snapped cable holding the pully. Noone should be injured if that happens. I mentioned to try to use a solid steel cable through the spring, simply because individual strands tend to rub and wear out. These inner cables should be checked yearly to make sure they are fit and do not interfere with the operation of the door. I am a retired computer programmer and home owner. I added those safety cables running inside the spring, as I had young kids with bikes going in/out of the garage. And some 4 years after I added that safety line, one spring snapped. There were no injuries and that is how I also learned about the color coding on the spring.

This "Old" House just installed a new door, without discussing the option of restoring what appeared to be a superior crafted original door. I see this a lot and the replacement turns out to be cheap crap. I have 4 wooden doors from 1950, Northern Ohio, Southern exposure. Every option I researched was cheap and out of character. So I restored for a fraction of the price and quality is 10x

great video i enjoyed it looks easy.

good video

Why not show how he handled the shim?

Where would you get that finishing rubber piece he adds at the end to help with weather sealing?

Why didn't they show the door running from the inside? with the cables scraping all the way down because he didn't use the proper bottom brackets. Please consult someone who knows what they are doing. This video is very flawed.

I was thinking about the possibility of restoring the old door. Many people might have doors that are not ruined so much as to warrant replacing.

nice

what's a trick for getting the stucco pattern after you repair a ding with bondo?

I noticed there are no horizontal reinforcing bars for wind. You didn't mention if the door complies with the local wind code for garage doors.

How do you address the gap at the bottom? You have to shim it to be level, so now the bottom corner just won't contact the ground?

I wish the video went into more details.

They failed to show how to tension the springs properly. Among other things

I wonder how Nate got into Joinery

Too bad garage doors have almost tripled in price in the last year. A $3300 door today cost $1200 in the beginning of 2021.

Torsion springs are so much better than those extension springs. Safer, more reliable and last longer.

my grandfather loved the show and i see why he did

‘No handles’? Let’s hope they don’t loose power and need to lift the door open or closed . And spring tension?

Melanie - "Sounds good."

These springs are different, what gives?

They didn't add a handle to the outside of the lowest door panel, which is necessary if the power if off or the automatic garage door opener is not working.

If you are going to replace the opener mechanism, and the garage is part of the house structure, go for a rubber belt drive. It is soo much quieter. The door being balanced means that tthe belt and drive should last some 25 years before needing replacement. Some new features allow you with bluetooth, to determine if the door is open or closed. Great for bedtime confirmations.

You forgot the top strut that’s a must

I’m nervous.

I know this Old House has a no shake when you first meet the person because they think it might look better but I think a shake hand will be better and shows respect. I'm just saying that as my personal opinion but I love this whole house and I believe I seen all of your episodes.

The J-arm (6:27) that connects to the door should be upright, not like they installed it here (6:38). At that angle, it'll be super easy for anyone (including thieves) to get in your garage and with the big windows, they can see just how weak your security is. The J should be upright so that anyone outside pulling up would just be pushing the bracket upward against the chain track. At this angle, pulling up on the door would result in the J-arm pushing the chain backward and allowing easy access to the garage.

why not use torsion springs? extension springs are practically obsolete and they will have to replace them sooner or later

The first thing you should do is check your sections for damage. Lol

And remember this. There is no other more important safety rule than to wear THESE... safety glasses... - Norm Abram

Nathan is a Dewalt guy? Tommy needs to make a few calls for him. #festool. 😂

What about doors with torsion springs?

I've never seen such a hack job in all 20+ years of hanging doors.

Was this lady's house in the town of Stepford?

Aluminum doors are the way to go

Wow my garage door is gonna fall due to wood dry rot and it's no longer secure to the stud only thing that's keeping it standing up is the other side of the door and the ground

7:28. If a woman tells you this at an end of a date, she is not calling you back for another date.

In my area, that would be a $1,000 installation job.

Not how to install a new door and replace the tracks new doors come with tracks if the door is thicker a wood door track won't work.

He didn’t show where or how to release the hook

👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

Nathan....Need to replace my garage door. You free anytime soon?

This is comedy watching them take down this door lol 😂 being a garage door tech and all it’s hilarious

Why do they seem so dead inside

"If you are not willing to risk the usual you will have to settle for the ordinary." --Jim Rohn

The garage door spring is very dangerous

STABILA - MADE IN GERMANY

Step one: buy the garage door.. After that I’m baffled.

My god this is a dangerous video. 99 percent of garage door safety is how the springs work, so of course let's totally gloss over that part and just show people using an impact a bunch of times. Yes this was a light door but loads of people have 18' doors with overhead springs and red screws that will go off like shotguns if mishandled, not a single mention of that.

Interesting - two-track system. And no springs. I guess a single width door is light enough.

I have owned a Garage Door company for 19 years and this is a disgrace to the entire door industry. Teaching the public how to do a complete hack job. This video should be taken down.

That’s a low head room it’s not going to work with those bottom brackets and top brackets lmao this is wrong! You can’t put the cable on the inside of the door and have the pulleys on the outside of the track.

She asked why the hinges were different but didn't get an answer

nothing like throwing away the character of a house for " new" Many of the doors were marine grade plywood, ours is in excellence condition after 75 years .

I think there should have been a bigger emphasis on how dangerous those springs are. This is very much a job for professionals.

I get this was an abbreviated video. There can be different ways to install a garage door and still be correct and function properly, but there are wrong ways to install as well. This video shows many wrong installation techniques. TOH really?

I’ve been in the garage door industry for 29 years. This door was incorrectly installed in many different ways. I’ve seen the comments about the springs. The track should have been changed also. The top brackets were incorrect because they were for the track that would have came standard with the door. It should have been ordered with the correct low headroom track so it could have been changed also. The cables were incorrectly installed. The way that they were installed will make the cables fray very quickly. I’m very disappointed in Ask This Old House for putting out this type of work and have lost confidence in the things that they tell people to do. You should have had a professional do this work not someone that does not know what they are doing.

Do not pay attention to this video. It is very wrong. TOH should remove it immediately before somebody hurts themselves or somebody else. The opener is installed wrong it will damage the top of the door, The cables are installed in a way that they will fail, hopefully not while the door is open and cause the door to come down like a 130lbs guillotine. Hopefully not on somebody or their car.

Please pull this video down TOH. As a door professional with over 40 years experience- there is not one thing done properly on the installation. About the only thing they got right was getting the correct size. Heck he even used the old pulleys off the old door and re-used a piece of 2x8 to mount the spring. Read the comments from other pro's and DO NOT use this video as a reference to install a garage door. Call a professional.

All you need to do to replace a garage door is pick up the phone. That's how I take care of things.

We need more energy Nathan…

Those pulleys are in terrible shape and shouldn't have been reused!

Not installing new track and springs is lazy

First thing I noticed is that all the tools were of new condition. Never used? Clue NOT to hire this guy! 😱🤣🤣🤣

Her and the husband should be in the video... all this looks shady... mr. Richard Dawson of the home improvements

As a professional garage door service tech/installer/salesman, there are so many things wrong in this video. From not measuring the opening height, measuring the headroom, not changing out the springs, not changing out the pulleys, using the wrong bottom fixtures. Actually, that about sums it up. But know something, you will not be that clean when done installing a garage door.

Do all wrong you need replace all garage door parts. That is dangerous to home owners. Need to get professional garage door guy for job

As a pro installer this guy makes it look harder not easier. He obviously doesn't do this for a living. What a hack. It's ok if i criticize him I'm a professional installer

This guy is not a garage door technician. First of all you didn’t change the track second of all he has the wrong bottom brackets on the door which are going to make the cable either fray and break or start cutting into the track poor lady wasted a lot of money and now has to have it fixed properly lol. Call Global Discount Door to get it done correctly! Good old Internet garbage in garbage out

Woodglut plans are amazing!

This is not how you install a garage door you cannot reuse the existing track on a old wood door most steel doors are 2 inches thick wood door is thinner .call a professional.

3-way fail: 1) Not using ear protection with an impact 2) Not showing the spring safety details 3) Forgot the handle on the outside

Now back to making sandwiches

Wow, used cables, used springs that aren't matched to the weight of the new door, used track, crappy weather seal fastened with a brad nailer. the first glimpse of opening the door is with the opener. no way... manually open the door even before the opener gets attached . TOH is misleading and showing potentially very dangerous situation for a DIY that tries to follow the methods used in the video. shame on TOH

I also own a garage door company. Please do not follow this video. Nothing personal against the people in the video but they just didn't do it right. Call a professional.

Why did you use the OLD TRACK ? That’s a Big NO NO. Also , you’re using the wrong bottom brackets for extension springs. Call a PROFESSIONAL. Don’t watch this.

If you're a homeowner and you're watching this and thinking you can do it don't this they did everything wrong in this video. I own a garage door company and been doing this 10+ years this is dangerous please just call a professional.

Why is this guy around the ladies but no husband 😕