Double Garage Door Conversion Options

Double Garage Door Conversion Options

Do you have a double garage door that you’d like to convert to two single garage doors? Or maybe you have two single garage doors you’d like to remodel into one double door. Either way, our professional service technicians at AAA Garage Door can remove or add a central garage pillar to make space for your new door.

Single to Double Garage Door Conversion

Converting two single garage doors into one double-sized garage door can be an investment for many families and businesses, but it is well worth it. Many double-sized garages are fitted with two separate doors, independent of each other, so that just one can be opened at a time.

Two single doors are typical of more traditional builds, as they were introduced when cars were smaller and could squeeze between the gap. Today, modern cars tend to be larger, and many people are now looking to convert their two single garage doors into one double garage door.

When considering converting two single garage doors into a double, it is essential to know the advantages so that you can make the best decision based on your lifestyle and budget.

How to Convert Two Single Garage Doors to a Double Door

The process of converting two single garage doors into one double door consists of the following steps:

1. Take measurements of the garage.
2. Select a replacement double garage door.
3. Perform garage pillar removal and discard the two single garage doors.
4. Install a new double door.
5. Add the final touches.

Benefits of Double Garage Doors

There are many benefits to having a double garage door, including:

• Allows for wider vehicles to enter: The space created by converting two single garage doors into a larger double door is great for parking sizable vehicles. One larger double door can also be a way of providing the drivers at your home or business with peace of mind. Drivers will have more wiggle room when backing into or pulling up to the garage and easily avoid scratches and dents.
• Provides additional walking space: Converting two single garage doors into one double door provides more walk-around room. Those exiting or entering the garage can more comfortably walk around stored items or vehicles.
• Updates the appearance: One double garage door can make the entire front of your home appear larger and help tie together its overall appearance. Whether you’re looking to sell your home or not, a newly installed double garage door increases your home’s value.
• Easier to maintain than two doors and two openers: Maintaining one double garage door is easier and more convenient than keeping up with two.
• Provides improved accessibility: For wheelchair users or the elderly, having the extra space is crucial for getting into and out of the car with ease.
• Streamlined operation: With one double garage door, you can operate the entire system with a single remote. This streamlines the exit and entry process and removes the clutter of multiple door remotes.

Double to Single Garage Door Conversion

If the thought of a double to single garage door conversion is intriguing to you, we recommend that your garage be at least 22 feet wide. This will give you ample space to get into and out of your vehicle comfortably. A double to single garage door conversion will grant you total control over how much of your garage’s interior is exposed to the outside.

How to Convert a Double Garage Door to Two Single Doors

Converting one double door to two single doors includes a sequence of steps similar to a single to double garage door conversion:

1. Take measurements of your garage.
2. Choose two replacement single garage doors.
3. Add a garage pillar to divide both sections.
4. Install two new single garage doors.
5. Add the final touches.

Benefits of Single Garage Doors

The advantages of converting one double garage door to two include:

• Reduce your heating bill and air conditioning costs: If you live in a cold climate, two single garage doors can lessen the amount of cold air that flows into the garage, reducing your heating bill. Two separate doors can also inhibit the humidity that enters your garage, significantly lowering your air conditioning costs.
• Have a backup plan in the case of a malfunction: If you opt for two single doors, you’ll be able to get one of your cars out of the garage in the case of a breakdown, such as torsion spring failure.
• Enhance the appearance of your home: While some homeowners prefer the streamlined appearance of one double garage door, others believe that two single garage doors better enhance the overall architectural design of their home.

Trust AAA Garage Door for Your Garage Door Conversion Needs

If you own a home or business in the Omaha area or its surrounding communities and you need to convert your double or single garage door, reach out to the trained technicians from AAA Garage Door.

As a locally-owned company with over 25 years of experience, we care about improving people’s businesses and homes. We’ve repaired all types of commercial and residential garage doors throughout the years and will help you find a garage door you love within your budget. Our team of highly skilled technicians makes high-quality products and superior service our priorities.

Get in touch with our garage door experts to find out more about how we can help with your double garage door conversion project.

Last Reviewed By Felipe Pinales on July 29th, 2020

Carriage House Garage Door Guide

If you want to remodel your Colonial or mid-century modern house, consider upgrading the door to your garage. A carriage-style garage door will increase the value of your home and provide a historic charm to your property. At AAA Garage Door in Omaha, Neb., we offer a variety of materials, colors, window designs and hardware for the exterior look of your overhead door. Use this buying guide to explore our carriage house garage doors for sale.

Carriage House Garage Door Buying Guide in the Nebraska Market

The garage makes up a signification portion of the exterior design of your house, and you want it to reflect your creative personality. Most homeowners only replace their garage door once in a lifetime, so you should put careful consideration into how you want to decorate this element of your home. Replacing your garage door with a carriage-house style offers the following benefits:

• It increases your home’s value and curb appeal.
• It keeps your home safe from intruders.
• It makes your home more energy-efficient.
• It reduces the noise from your operating system and outside activity.
• It reduces the number of garage door repairs you’ll need each year.
• It prevents accidental injury to your family or property.

If you’re considering a residential carriage house garage door for your home, AAA Garage Door is a full-service company that provides quality residential Clopay® doors and LiftMaster openers. After you choose a garage door to complement the style of your home, we’ll discuss the next steps of the installation process, including scheduling annual inspections and repairing worn-out parts over the years.

What Are Carriage House Garage Doors?

Carriage house garage doors reflect the design of a traditional barn or stable door, giving your home’s exterior a mid-century modern appearance. While carriage-style doors complement rustic homes, they also provide a pleasant contrast to contemporary ones. This style door will boost your home’s curb appeal with a versatile design and enhance its energy efficiency with its layers of insulation.

Even though original carriage house doors were wooden, we offer other low-maintenance options for your garage door, including steel and wood composite, besides natural wood. You could also design your garage door to look like an old-fashioned carriage door with elegant window treatments and decorative hardware.

View Our Garage Door Styles

How Do Carriage House Garage Doors Open?

The original design of carriage house doors featured intricately carved wooden panels and wrought-iron hardware. Metal hinges on the ends of the entryway gave it the ability to swing out and make space for horse-drawn carriages. Modern carriage house garage doors still have the same design, but with a more updated operating system to accommodate automated vehicles.

How Much Does a Carriage House Garage Door Cost?

If you’re trying to plan a full remodel of the exterior of your house, you should think about the garage door cost. The price to install and design your carriage house door depends on several factors, but you could customize this entryway to fit within your budget.

Consider these factors that affect the price of your door to help you decide what you should personalize.

• Materials: Steel is the most affordable material, followed by wood composite and natural wood. If you choose natural wood, keep in mind that you also need to paint and reseal your wooden panels every couple of years to increase its resistance to moisture.
• Insulation: An energy-efficient door will reduce your monthly energy bill and provide a more comfortable temperature for your home. While an insulated garage door with a high R-value will cost more money up front, you’ll save money on your utility bill.
• Location: Where you live affects the cost of your installation project due to the availability of the materials and the fees local contractors charge. If you choose a bulkier door, you should also be aware that they tend to be more expensive to install because the installer might need to hire a team to help carry the door.

What Are Barn-Style Garage Doors?

You might also hear people call carriage house garage doors barn-style garage doors because they look like stable or barn doors. Until the 20th century, people used horse-drawn carriages as a means of transportation, and they would store their wagons in carriage houses. These barn doors initially consisted of natural wood, and they would swing out to allow the driver to park their vehicle.

Even if you drive an automatic car, you could still have the traditional elegance of a barn door-style garage door to protect the place where you park your vehicle. The country-style residential garage door features faux wood overlay design options, as well as various window patterns for your selection. You may choose a natural wood door to stay true to the original design, or you could create a steel door with an Ultra-Grain® wood finish for less maintenance. 

Different Types of Carriage House Garage Doors

Our collection of Clopay® carriage house-style garage doors will enhance the appearance of your house in Omaha. After choosing an energy-efficient material to complement the exterior design of your property, you could personalize the following features of your garage door based on what the design brochure includes for each collection.

• Insulation: If you have a steel garage door, you could choose one-, two- or three-layer construction of galvanized steel for more insulation. Wood naturally has a high R-value, but you could add more insulation to your garage door for better noise reduction and temperature regulation. The insulation options for most collections are 1-3/8″ or 2″ Intellicore® polyurethane, 1-3/8″ or 2″ polystyrene or 1-5/16″ vinyl-backed polystyrene. Combined with any of these insulation materials, your energy-efficient door could have an R-value between 5.9 to 20.4.
• Colors: Our inventory of carriage house doors provides a total of 12 factory finishes for your selection, including several Ultra-Grain® wood finishes to give your steel or faux wood garage door the appearance of natural wood.
• Overlay pattern: If the door you choose for your garage features wood composite overlay and cladding, you could customize the design of these faux wood panels. Most overlays come in a criss-cross pattern, but you may also choose to create vertical or horizontal lines instead.
• Hardware: The decorative hardware of your carriage house garage door gives it the appearance of a swing-out door. Select from a variety of metal hinges, lift handles and step plates to enhance your home’s historic look.

1. Steel Carriage House Garage Doors

The steel carriage house garage doors in our inventory feature durable, insulated steel panels with wood composite overlays, providing your home with a unique and sophisticated design. With steel and a fresh coat of Ultra-Grain® finish, your door could have the appearance of natural wood, but with less maintenance and higher durability.

We provide a variety of collections with elegant charm to complement the historic appeal of your property.

• GALLERY® Collection: The vintage look and feel of the products in the GALLERY® Collection make these traditional raised steel panel doors stand out from the rest. You can customize your grooved-panel steel garage door from this collection with the right thickness of insulation for your climate. The color you choose should complement the theme of the rest of your house. Complete the look of your carriage house door with wrought-iron decorative hardware.
• COACHMAN® Collection: The COACHMAN® Collection has a reputation for its ideal mix of practicality and beauty. If you choose a carriage house garage door from this series, you’ll have a product that looks like wood but contains low-maintenance, long-lasting steel and insulation. A wood-grain textured composite overlay completes the design of the door, which you could also personalize according to your taste.
• GRAND HARBOR® Collection: The doors from the GRAND HARBOR® Collection are a cost-effective, low-maintenance option for a coastal, yet historic, aesthetic for your home, especially in new construction. Our manufacturers apply a protective coating over the thick layer of steel to maintain the appearance and durability of the door.
• CANYON RIDGE® Collection LIMITED EDITION Series: The LIMITED EDITION Series of this beautiful collection features energy-efficient carriage house doors with a steel base and Intellicore® insulation. The wood composite cladding and overlays contain natural wood fibers to give the material the appearance of various species of wood.

2. Wood Carriage House Garage Doors

A natural wood carriage house garage door would complement the appearance of any Craftsman or Colonial house. The RESERVE® WOOD Collection LIMITED EDITION Series showcases products with authentic carriage house designs paired with historical charm and character, with the convenience of an overhead operation. You can choose from eight designs and multiple wood species to fit the style of your home.

3. Faux Carriage House Garage Doors

Faux wood, or wood composite, gives your door a luxurious appearance but with less maintenance. In the CANYON RIDGE® Collection ULTRA-GRAIN® Series, you have an economical alternative to the Limited Edition Series, featuring the durability of steel paired with the natural beauty of stained wood. With its two-inch-thick Intellicore® insulation, a door from this series has an R-value of 18.4.

4. Custom Carriage House Garage Doors

If you can’t find the ideal garage door for your home’s design theme, you could create a one-of-a-kind wood garage door from the RESERVE® WOOD Collection CUSTOM Series. If you can dream it, we can design it, no matter the color or the size. Our Door Imagination System can help you brainstorm which color, material, panel and window patterns would go perfectly with your living space. You could upload a picture of your house to envision how your custom garage door would look on your property.

Carriage House Garage Door Windows

Complete your carriage house garage door with a unique window design. Browse through the brochure of each of the collections we offer to find out the specific windows available for your desired product. In general, you could personalize any of the following features.

• Window size: Whether you have a one-car or two-car garage, you could choose a long or short windowpane pattern across your door.
• Window shape: Carriage house-style garage doors with windows often have rectangular or arch shapes on the top.
• Window type: Some of our collections offer unique window types, aside from the rectangular or arch shape, such as the Kristin, the Trenton, the Clayton and the Wrought Iron. You could review the design brochures of these collections to discover how they would look against your house.
• Single and double-top section: You could choose one or two rows of small windows for the top part of your garage door. The upper row features a traditional arched design.
• Grille pattern: The decorative grilles are available in rectangular, square, vertical, horizontal or vertical and horizontal. You can easily remove them when you need to clean them.
• Glass option: You could choose faux or real glass for your windows. The glass design options include clear, frosted, seeded, obscure, rain, frosted gluechip, delta frost and narrow reed.

What’s the Best Garage Door Opener for a Carriage House Garage Door?

You need a robust carriage house garage door opener from the LiftMaster Elite Series with the horsepower to operate your sturdy garage door. Several of our openers from this series are compatible with the MyQ® app to allow you to control your door from anywhere you have internet access, even if there is a power outage.

The garage door openers from the LiftMaster Elite Series include the following.

• LiftMaster Elite Series 8550WLB: This belt drive garage door opener has Wi-Fi capability and includes a DC battery backup. The DC motor allows quiet and smooth operation, especially for lifting wood and composite wood. You would install this opener on your ceiling.
• LiftMaster Elite Series 8587W: This AC chain drive garage door opener can also connect to the internet and mounts on the ceiling. It has 3/4 horsepower and an I-beam rail system that provide it with the strength to lift a heavy door, especially a door with a wood overlay design. Even though it’s tough, it’s also nearly silent.
• LiftMaster Elite Series 8500: This wall mount garage door opener saves you ceiling space by sticking to the wall next to the garage door opening. The DC battery backup allows the garage door to work, even during a power outage.
• LiftMaster Elite Series 8500W: This wall mount opener in the Elite Series is a step above the 8500, with Wi-Fi capability to operate your garage door from anywhere in the world. Its DC battery backup gives it the ability to continue holding up your garage door during the power outage. It reduces the noise and vibration to provide smooth operation.

Carriage House Garage Door Company in Omaha

At AAA Garage Door, we will provide the perfect Clopay® residential garage door for your property in Omaha, Neb. Our quiet, energy-efficient LiftMaster garage door openers will also improve the quality of your home. Browse through our inventory on our website, and contact us online or call us at 402-727-0789 to request an estimate.

Last Reviewed By Felipe Pinales on September 28th, 2020

Tips for Choosing the Right Garage Door to Match the Style of Your Home

When it is time to consider garage door replacement for your Omaha or Fremont home, there is much more to think about than just finding the right size and shape to fit the opening. The overhead door must fit seamlessly and have the functional features you need. Also, other important considerations such as style, color, the various types available, and different materials options ultimately affect both performance and curb appeal.

Selecting A Garage Door For Your Home Is An Important Design Choice

Have you ever picked out a paint color only to find out later than it didn’t look the way you’d intended when selecting the swatch? It’s happened to most of us. We believe that choosing a new overhead garage door is one of those things you want to ensure it “fits” the overall scheme and personality of your home. We think of a new overhead garage door, much like selecting the paint or interior decorative features, should “match” not just color, but also the architectural design, aesthetic feel, and your unique character and qualities.

Checkout Clopay’s Lookbook

With Help From AAA Garage Door, Inc. And Clopay, Selecting Your Perfect Door Is Simple

With the variety of styles and options available from Clopay, homeowners never have to hope the new door they select will be perfect. We can help identify which type most closely matches your home’s design from swing-out garage doors, swing-up door, sliding doors, and roll-up overhead door options. The Clopay Door Imagination System allows homeowners to upload photos of their own home and see which style provides precisely the look they want, all with just a few simple clicks.

We’ll also help you consider the materials that would be most appropriate for your home and the day-to-day use of your garage door. In our area, Clopay doors are ideal options in more than 1,000 different garage door designs in wood, steel, composite, aluminum and glass and AAA Garage Door, Inc. will help guide you to the perfect choice for your home.

Don’t Forget The Safety Features When Selecting Your New Garage Door System

Of course, the look and overall aesthetic are critical when choosing your new overhead door, but never overlook the importance of built-in safety features such as pinch resistance to protect fingers when the door opens and closes, tamper-resistant brackets to keep intruders out and safety features that reduce the chance of hard-working mechanisms breaking under pressure. A new garage door should also have energy-efficient features built right in, but make your investment not just attractive and safe, but also cost-effective.

View Our Residential Garage Door Styles

Make One Call For The Right Garage Door For Your Home

Choosing the right type of door for your personality and needs, as well as thinking about the garage door material should be a part of the process when buying a new residential overhead door. Call AAA Garage Door, Inc. at (402) 727-0789 and our technicians will happily review all the options available. You can also fill out a contact form and we’ll be in touch with you shortly!

Last Reviewed By Felipe Pinales on August 28th, 2020