We’ve been together now for forty years . . .

 

We’ve been together now for forty years . . .

It’s not just the door that needs to be replaced, The trellis above, which is meant to be festooned with honeysuckle, is in dire need of repair. The honeysuckle chose to climb the drainpipe instead, despite my best efforts.

Actually, it’s rather longer than forty years that the garage door was first installed. It was already in place when we moved into the house.

It’s an ‘up—and-over’ electrically operated double door that has done good service through the years. I remember, with a shudder, the day the children and I were in the garage and about to get into my very small car to travel the 12 miles to school. As the door began to rise, my son’s fingers were caught in the mechanism. He suffered no lasting damage and I wonder if he recalls the incident. Certainly, though a little crushed, there were no broken bones or blood and he went to school as usual. I don’t even remember any bruises.

Eventually, the door began to complain about being opened and would stop before completing the exercise. Sometimes, the gap it left was sufficient for someone to slip through, but at other times, limbo dancing would have been a useful skill. We no longer kept a car in the garage as mice had taken up residence and we didn’t want them chewing important wires under the bonnet.

The writing was on the wall. Repairing the door, now rather bent and battered, was out of the question. The gaps around the door, at every extremity, were now large enough to enable huge rats to enter – well, perhaps not – but they definitely allowed ‘cool gales’ to ‘fan the glade’ providing arctic conditions in the garage.

There is a whole subculture dedicated to doors. We already knew that since we had been researching front doors for several years, our existing door showing signs of deterioration. We became au fait with door furniture, mortice deadlocks, escutcheons, door frames and the rest, coming to no conclusions and leaving it all ‘for another day.’

The garage door had to be replaced. The garage is integral and has an interior door to the house. There was a very real danger that it might become inextricably stuck at some inconvenient point between open and closed. Thus the search began for a replacement garage door. It was an easy enough exercise, we thought, despite our wrangles with the front door. It’s just a garage door. Simple!

We didn’t anticipate spending much time reaching a decision. How wrong we were! Given the extraordinarily wide range of doors in every material and colour known to man and my husband’s nitpicking painstaking analysis of everything, I feared we would never reach a decision. I mean, analysis is good, commendable, even, but I have a low boredom threshold and a high inclination to headaches so usually drift off. I am awoken startled into awareness only when I realise I am being asked my opinion.

Anyway, we made a decision. Success! The next part of the exercise was finding a company to supply and fit the door. Several were contacted and gave wildly differing estimates. More analysis ensued. Finally, we he settled on one and today’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic the defunct door is being replaced.

 It’s taking five hours!