Work in progress: shop doors

[Drew Bernat]

I'm lucky enough to have a 3 car garage that I can entirely use as a workshop. That said, the ceiling is just a shade over 8' and so the overhead garage doors take up a lot of space - specifically their tracks. Simple solution: get rid of them! I'm replacing them with carriage-style doors on hinges.

High level design:
1) Small glass windows for light
2) Must look craftsman style to match the house
3) Torsion boxes (it's overkill, but I want the experience)
4) Insulated for noise and temperature

Step 1: order windows and hinges. Check.
Step 2: stick hardware in the corner of the shop for two months until I get around to starting the project. Check.
Step 3 ... sigh

The plan is to use 1/4" plywood skins and ribs since I'm really, really not worried about strength. I'm planning to fill the interior spaces with chopped up pieces of foam. Finally, I'll use 1/2" plywood strips to build a craftsman-style facade on the front of the door and then just paint the whole thing white. This way it looks like it's stick built but isn't. When I got to the lumberyard I discovered a whole pile of 3" wide, 1/8" thick shim stock ... score! No more cutting ribs.

Next up: cutting 4x8 sheets of foam insulation into 6" squares.

[Drew Bernat]

Note to self: I probably didn't actually need a 6" grid for a vertical hinged torsion box. That was a lot of cutting.

We start with the pile of loot: plywood and foam on top of my poor disassembled pool table. Some day...

The purple foam is for a base for my track saw (for some insane reason I didn't bring the last sheet with me when I moved, so now I get to spend four times as much on the same thing. Why? I have no idea). Then a sheet of 1.5" and a sheet of 1", since I didn't expect to actually fit two 1.5" sheets in the 3" rib material ... something would be slightly over and I'd be in trouble. Also, 2.5" of foam is fine for a door.
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6" strips on the table saw:
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And 6" squares. About two minutes after I stacked all of that my daughter came in asking to get into the chest freezer. Why? WHYYYYYY?
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For the 1" thick squares I just left a pile behind the table saw because I was tired of stacking.

[Drew Bernat]

Time to see if I'm doing this right...

The rib stock has been cut into a lot of short (6") pieces and a smaller number of longer pieces that span the door. I'm not going to be able to accurately nail or staple 1/8" thick stock, but I think that the foam squares will keep things sufficiently vertical. Also, I can be really sloppy with the glue; nobody will ever see the inside of this thing. And it's a door, not an assembly table.

First, a sanity check ... seems like this approach might work:
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Then start the build. Sharp-eyed viewers will notice that I didn't start at one end, I started in the middle with a scrap piece of lumber tacked down to keep things square. That's where the window is going! Yep, a hole in the middle of the torsion box for a window unit. Fixed double pane, nothing fancy - if I want air I'll just open the door. I also have 6" inside each square, which means I get slop over time - and the door is not a multiple of 6" wide. So there's tiny slots on one side. Meh? It's fine. Finally, the actual edges are going to be 1/2" ply for sturdiness. On the first door I decided to add them second for some crazy reason I don't remember. Next time? They went in first.
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Finally, got to keep everything flat, which means heavy objects. Good news: we're re-tiling a bathroom and each box is thirty pounds! My aching back ...
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[Drew Bernat]

Uh oh, I replied in thread instead of to the original post ... probably going to make this unreadable.

Interlude: SLEEPING CATS. The cuteness overwhelms.

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Okay, back. We now have a grid of insulation pieces! Amusingly, the fact that I didn't have the shiny side up on some bugged me and I pried them out and flipped them. Sigh ... also, I somehow cut a whole bunch as parallelograms instead of squares, so they don't fit. ARGH.
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Full glue-up of the grid, leaving the window cavity...
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And ... hey, look, two pieces of plywood the same size! Umm woo? Also, isn't there supposed to be a window in there?
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And a huge pile of tile boxes to keep everything flat. Why do I have the nailer ... oh, right, the side strips.

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And I have a slab! And it didn't fall apart when I moved it!

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[Drew Bernat]

Hey, we have new neighbors! Or at least fewer termites. For folks in cold climates: that's a tent for a bug bomb, not a circus.

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And a finished door slab. Look, magic window! Actually, a hand router with a bearing guided bit to cut out the cutout.
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[Alan Lightstone]

Nice job, and appreciate all the pictures.

Ummm.... Your workshop is next to termites???!!!!???

[Kyle Stiefel]

Great work!

Nothing useful to input, just saw the kegerator, haha

[Kevin Jenness]

Looks good. The gridwork can be omitted if the foam is glued. I've used blueboard calibrated for thickness and epoxy in a vacuum press. 6mm marine ply skins, thick edgeband to accept hinge screws and blocking for locksets and windows, 3/32" veneer for wear layer and appearance. Polyurethane glue would work as well. If I were doing a grid I think I would use thicker core strips for more glue area, but I'm sure your doors will be fine.

[Jim Becker]

Excellent work. Those should be pretty energy efficient and will look good, too.

If I find out that the overhead door for my new shop building is going to be delayed for any meaningful amount of time, I'm likely going to do what you created here, more or less. I'd actually prefer that, but so far, it's been a matter of "picking my battles" on time, effort and cost.

[Tom M King]

Looks good, and should really pay off in energy savings.

[Drew Bernat]

Alan - it's a California thing. We don't actually get cold here so nothing kills the bugs off. When you buy a house one of the things on the list is to set off a bug bomb. Did they have termites? Maaaaybe... but nobody wants to find out for sure. And it's not that expensive. We did it when we moved in too.

Kyle - thanks! It's actually 3/4 non-alcoholic for kids, but that last tap ... oh yes, that last tap.

Kevin - excellent point. This was primarily practice, in an odd way. The 1/8" thick strips definitely don't have a lot of glue surface so I wouldn't trust them for anything other than a door or something with a ton of support.

Next up once I get pictures: the false front and paint. And I have this idea for storage racks on the inside. I could do a French cleat or a sliding dovetail and get some square footage for storage.

[Drew Bernat]

Aaaand my computer caught up. Piccy time!

First up, cutting out the window hole with my trusty palm router. I've had a full size one for years, but the palm router is incredibly useful. Next task for it is the hinge pockets.
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Next up, test fitting. They actually fit! I had measured twice but was secretly expecting the frame to be enough out of square that things wouldn't fit. You can see the existing door behind them.

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Painted one of the units today. Well, my daughter did. And then I did later but it's worth it to get her hooked. You can see the frame design. It's just 1/2" plywood strips glued and nailed on; I noodled around with a drawing program until I found proportions I liked.
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... anyone know why I can't rotate pictures? Weird. Anyway, here's the proportions. The bit to the left was me figuring out the cutting patterns. I should get cutlist software ... but I haven't.

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[Wes Grass]

All the ribs and blocks ...

I'm kinda wondering how Zip System R would work for this.

Don't know how to deal with it if you need bigger than 4x8. And not a clue on the cost. If I'd known about it 10-15 years ago I'd probably have my 'log cabin' covered with it.

[Drew Bernat]

The Zip system would probably work really well. Kevin suggested just skinning purple (blue?) foam sheets, which would work just as well in practice. I ended up using styrofoam for the fill because it was half the price and what I really care about is sound insulation (well, what my neighbors care about is sound insulation).

Funny you should mention 4x8 ... the first door I'm replacing is a single width, so each door ends up ~40" wide. The other is a double car sized door. I don't think I really want 80" of swing out door ... that's a ton of load on the hinges. So my plan is to put a post in the middle and convert my 2+1 garage door setup to a 1+1+1. Any thoughts? Am I overengineering and I should just chill out?

[Jim Becker]

Drew, have a watch of Mike Farrington's video on the 'Tube relative to his big carriage doors he did a few years ago. When you get to larger sizes, you build them beefier and use appropriate hinges. That said, since you're replacing what sounds like a 16' door, most definitely do the post thing to keep things reasonable. You also have the option of keeping one section as a "fixed wall" if you want to and don't have a need to actually open all the "doors". Some folks with the typical three vehicle 16' + 8/9' door setup keep the little door and just build a wall behind the larger one after removing and storing the overhead tracks. I'd do that in a heartbeat if I was faced with that situation in a residential setting. More wall space and easy to seal up for weather and noise.