The Project House has garage space for five cars—one three-car garage
and a two-car garage, both attached to the house and sharing a courtyard. We
needed to install six garage doors because one car slot is a pass-through, with
a door in front and another in back.
Garage doors are one of the most visible components of a home's exterior.
When it was time to select the six doors for the Project House garages, we
wanted doors that would pull the architectural details and elements from the
home into the garage, thus supporting and adding to the architectural
integrity of the entire home.
Garage doors are sometimes treated as an afterthought when homeowners are
planning a new home. The thinking of many homeowners and builders has been
that as long as the garage doors operate dependably and are a color that
is complementary to the home's exterior paint and trim, any good door will
do. However, over the last decade or so, there's been a new trend toward
custom wooden doors that perfectly complement new construction, historic
preservation and era-inspired architecture.
Designer Doors for the Project House
In the late 1980s garage door maker Kent Forsland began to treat
garage doors as an essential component of a home's overall exterior
décor. His company, Designer Doors, began selling a line of high-quality
wood garage doors to architects, homebuilders and homeowners.
The Designer Doors we chose for the Project House are framed with a
clear grade Douglas Fir substructure overlaid with clear Western Red
Cedar.
Douglas Fir is known for its natural rigidity and stability and its
superior strength-to-weight ratio. Douglas Fir is tightly-knotted and
close-grained. The doors we installed in the Project House can withstand
winds up to 140 miles per hour—a significant consideration in Dallas,
Texas, in the heart of the most thunderstorm and tornado-prone area of
the United States. The Douglas Fir frame is enclosed with Superply plywood
on both sides, creating an extremely strong "box" construction that
offsets tension and compression and provides a natural rigidity.
(Source: Designer Doors)
The Western Red Cedar that gives our doors their distinctive look
is a beautiful wood with a rich grain and warm palette. The Red Cedar
has a natural luster that cannot be duplicated by any man-made
material. For durability, cedar wood contains natural tannins that
provide built-in resistance to decay and insects.
To prevent moisture infiltration, the doors are constructed so
that no end grain is exposed at the base of the door, and a
woodworking technique called a "drip cap" is built into the surface
materials. The drip cap is a strip of wood with a 45-degree bevel
recessed into the door face and applied on top of the horizontal
bottom trim board to deflect water.
Vent holes are drilled into each section of the door to allow
air movement into the interior of the door, which will further increase
the longevity of our Designer Doors on the Project House.
Contact Information:
Designer Doors
1-800-241-0525
Installation (Dallas, TX)
Nor Tex Overhead Door
940-566-5596 |
