After a couple hours in the garage last night rewiring our garage door opener, I can safely say we’ve pretty much wrapped up the major work in there for the season. Here’s how our checklist looks at this point…
– Have the garage spackled.
–Paint
– Epoxy the floor (postponed until APR/MAY)
– Paint the interior garage access door (also moved to warmer months)
– Rewire the garage door opener (this week)
– Install garage organizers (soon, probably before Christmas)
As you can see, we’re still planning on putting in some sort of shoe organizer, but we’re still kicking ideas around for that one.
Now for the opener…
When Lisa and I moved into this house last July (2010), one of the first things we did was install a garage door opener. We bought a Chamberlain Whisper Drive model that installed fairly easily. Is it whisper quiet? Well, the opener is, but the actual garage door is noisy enough to make up for it. Apparently, if you really want a quiet garage door, you need to replace the metal wheels that are attached to the door with plastic ones. That change is supposed to soften the door’s ride.
No, I didn’t have a problem with the noise. My big beef with this garage door opener was the wires were too short. No, not too short that it didn’t install properly, the wires were too short to run in straight neat lines. I was majorly disappointed last year when I had to run these crappy wires directly across the garage ceiling at angles instead of keeping them in the corners. Garage doors, generally speaking, have three sets of wires that need to be run when the openers are installed: one for the button or console by the door and two for the trip sensors that detect if something is in the path of the door. The sensors are safety features designed to protect children, pets, etc.
Since we were painting all the walls, I thought this was a perfect opportunity to rectify this grave injustice! As part of my paint prep, I removed all the staples holding the wires on to the walls and just let them hang. I also picked up about 50 ft of white (to match) 18 gauge alarm/thermostat cable from Home Depot and went to work. The idea here would be to run the wires where and how I wanted and then just splice in the new white wires as an extension.
I started with the console by the door, went straight up the wall and just kept tucking the wire into the corner.
Every few feet or so, I’d add another wire clamp. These are the clamps I used…
Here’s what that run looked like when it was finished. Hard to see the wire right? That’s the point!
Kind of an OCD fix, but I’m happy with it.
Anything really minor bug the hell out of you? Did you goto great lengths to fix it?
Tomorrow we’ll have a post on our new Miter Saw purchase. I’ll tell you what I look for when I purchase one.
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