Video Transcript

Hi, I’m Micah Garrett with BuildBlock Building Systems. One of the common questions we often get is how to finish a garage door. Today, we’re gonna take some time to walk you through a couple of different approaches for how you might finish and install a garage door. When installing a garage door, there are really four considerations you need to take into account.

First, you need to think about your rough opening size and how you’re going to support and give attach points for your garage door and finishes. Second, it’s important to think about how you’re going to attach the rails of your garage door. You need to think about materials that will allow you to attach to the actual ICF wall and give you attach points for things like sensors and safety equipment. Third, it’s very important to consider how you will mount the center rail and also the spring, so if you’re going to be using an opener it’s important to create attach points so that you can mount it to the ICF wall. Lastly, you need to think about your finished materials. What are you going to buck the door with? How are you going to finish and trim the door out? Taking all of these pieces into account will help you get a nice finished installation.

One of the common questions is, “how do you attach your side rail to an ICF wall?” In this case, we frame the door out with a piece of one by four which we’ve attached either to the webs or directly to the concrete. You can attach this using wedge bolts or with tap cons or using screws into the actual webs. The key thing is that you’re getting this plumb and very secure. Safety sensors install a variety of different ways, some may install directly to the rail while others may install directly to the wall. It’s important that you give yourself enough room and clearance especially if it’s going to be a mounted directly to the wall.

One consideration is how you’re going to mount your center rail and also your spring to the ICF wall. In this instance, we actually mounted a board directly to the concrete wall. This gives you a nice attach point that’s going to support one of the heaviest parts of your garage door. It also gives you a clean finish and gives you a mounting point to screw directly into for your spring and also for your center rail. Mounting your motor is typically a function of how your joists are hung. Usually, you’ll use a piece of strapping that spans between two joists to hang your motor. If you’re mounting to an ICF deck floor system, you’ll need to mount directly to the concrete. You can use wedge bolts or a variety of different attach points that will go directly into the concrete itself. How you case and trim your garage door is one of the final considerations you need to think about. We used a piece of rough-hewn cedar, 2 by 15, to case and trim this door. Really, it’s a function of the width of your wall, and since we used brick on the outside of this wall, we were at about 15 inches of total width. We also took the time to make sure that the cedar is slightly inside the rough opening so that when the garage door comes closed it actually covers up part of the door itself and prevents water from coming inside of your door.