I live in a brick house built 1987. I want to remove the garage door and turn my garage into a spare room. Any ideas on to enclose the garage door opening? I want to put a patio door so I am only talking about a couple of feet.
build out the walls to meet the rough opening size for the patio door as the walls are presently built. yes, what's there is a template. you will need to run up two studs at the door mounting, sistered together, on top of an extended plate (bottom) nailed into the concrete apron. parallel, level, and plumb to the existing opening, so the opening for the patio door will be square.
you will find that the patio door is probably not as high as the garage door was. so there will need to be a header built for the patio door as the header was built for the garage door. use that as a template, the header will have to sit on top of those studs to distribute the weight and stress of the door assembly.
you can get a $30 framing book at the home centers if you want details in print, but it's basically put another door frame centered inside the one you have.
before you do, shut the garage door, make sure there's a light you can see between the door's side and the frame around it, and push on the sidewall of the garage a couple times. see the light bounce? that's the wall moving. don't slap up two 2x4s and call the job good, you will have to have it cradle that door assembly or it will never run smoothly.
matching the siding trim is not going to work. ideally you should pull off some siding back to seams and reside a part of the wall to get a seamless appearance. if you just slap up a few one-foot pieces of siding on either side of this change, it will look very cobby.
brick siding actually works for you here, you only have to take out one brick per row or a half brick, for every row, to have a clean seam to build off of. you will need to match the brick, and you will need to match the mortar. that's usually done by mixing in a little dirt or dark dust in a small test batch, let it set, and compare it. ask the brickyard guys how they can set you up with that.
lot of details to make this look right and built solidly. the pros are pros because they deal with the details. also, this is a permit job, it's structural. pull the permit, ask the city inspector how they want it done before you do it, so you don't fail inspections and have to do things multiple times.
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sig: if this is a new economy, how come they still want my old-fashioned money?
One big thing to concider is the fact that water will find it's way under that wall at some point. When installing the bottom plate add silicone caulking under the plate, leave the bottom plate in one piece (do not cut out for the door) add a sill pan under the door. http://www.jamsill.com/pilot.asp When installing the sheathing keep it 1/2" off of the concrete. Make sure the bottom plate is pressure treated lumber and ACQ fastners (rated for use on pressure treated wood) are used. I would also go so far as installing a 2' row at the bottom of the wall with storm and ice shield so when water splashes back up on the wall it will do no harm. Building in some sort of roof over the door will be a big help in stopping any damage to the door and walls.
joecaption
Posts: 11237 | Location: Halieford VA | Registered: Jan 31, 2004
Assuming it is a 16 ft garage door opening, you don't have to put the new door in the center. You can put it off to one side, if that will look and work better. You could even add a window into the existing opening. You aren't changing the structure of the existing garage door opening. You will leave the header that is there now. You don't need a full fledged header above the new door, since there is already one there. So you are just doing fill in work. But, to be to code, you may have to add some electrical outlets. And outdoor light.
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