Hi folks, I'm buying a house with a half-finished garage. All the garage really needs is a door - or rather, a double-door, with hinges at each side. After spending all my cash on the house, I will be on an incredibly tight budget, so the doors I make are going to have to be CHEAP! I don't necessarily want them to last forever, but I do want them to be fairly secure, as I'll be storing a lot of valuable stuff in the garage. Can anyone offer any suggestions about materials. I'm thinking 12mm ply - or would that warp like crazy as soon as it gets the sun on it - or it gets rained on?
4x2 ledged & braced frame, OSB on the face Add some weldmesh steel inside too. This will significantly slowdown anyone trying to cut through to nick your stuff and with luck wreck their chainsaw.
Add hinge bolts too- a cheap precaution to hinge attacks on outward opening doors
Plain pine garage doors are only around £150 from Howdens. You'll need an account holder to buy them, but at that price I wouldnt even think of making some myself. Aaln.
Bob Minchin wrote in news:mqQmn.269023$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe30.ams:
Thanks to all for the great suggestions. Regarding ready made pine doors - unfortunately, don't have a Howden's anywhere close, and the doorway has unusual dimensions, so perhaps the Sterling/OSB board is my best bet.
1930s / 1950s book of "Home Carpentry for Chaps", probably written by Charles Hayward
Follow their instructions for a braced & ledged door (Z ow W frame on the back). Use larch or doug fir, bought from a good timber merchant (finding them is the hardest part - Bendrey Bros in the SW).
You're going for solid timber, not ply, because it's cheaper (strength per quids) and its failure more is gradual bending and rotting from the ends, not delaminating and falling apart. A weekend's work should see you with 25 years of door.
You'll need to make a simple butted frame, or at most some crude half- lap joints. Most of the strength comes with screws and triangulation with the door cover material. This is vertical matchboarding of larch / doug fir / cedar, with tongue & groove joints and chamfered edges. Cut these either by getting the merchant to do it, or else by a small cheap router and the boards on top of a Workmate. it's not precision work, it's pretty easy to do.
If you have time / skills / router, then stick some windows in it. This is either a square frame of crude, a square frame with rebates, or a square frame with moudlings, done with your router and a panel bit set (15 quid Toolstation)
Screwfix or Toolstation for great big chunky galved strap hinges.
To make it strong, you need to make the frame strong and make the covering hard to pry off board by board. Screw each face board mightily into the frame (2 screws min per joint). To make the frame strong, duplicate some more verticals onto the back of it, making it 3 layers rather than two. For real chavproofing, do the frame from 2x1 steel square box, welded, and with wooden boards on the front (screw from the back).
Paint it well, especially the end grain. This means a decent primer, a coat of aluminium paint, and top gloss. Otherwise a shedload of bitumen paint, but it'll end up black.
"Dave Liquorice" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@srv1.howhill.co.uk:
Dave, When you refer to WBP, that would include shuttering board, yes? I'm thinking that shuttering board is probably the cheapest 18mm weatherproof ply widely available. Is that correct?
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