New garage door.

You know you’re old when…

      you get excited about a garage door.

Yep, that’s me. We have replaced a ton of big items on our house: new roof, new bathroom ceiling, new windows, new septic tank, new water softener, new washer & dryer, new kitchen appliances, new waterproofing system in the basement, and now a new garage door!

Our old {really old} garage door was most likely the original door from the 50s. It was chipping paint terribly and the opener didn’t work either.

The only thing good looking in the photo above is the little girl playing with her pinwheel flower {that she is obsessed with.} I’ll digress with some pinwheel photos for a second…

Digression complete.

Garage doors are stupid expensive, in my humble opinion. I really wanted to keep putting our extra money towards paying off our college loans early, but we also knew there was a chance this chippy paint could be lead paint. Not cool. Especially not cool now that the weather’s nice and we have an outdoor-lovin, mobile little one. No matter how stupid expensive the garage door might be, it’s worth it to get rid of the potential of lead paint.

The first quote we received for a new garage door totaled a couple hundred dollars short of $3,000. {YIKES.} We shopped around garage door specialty stores, called Lowes {got it down to $1,400}, and finally went to Menards and found an insulated door, opener, and contracted installation for a total of $1,100. There’s also an added bonus that the garage door is locally made about 40 minutes away from our house.

Oooh. Ahhh. Pretty white garage door.

And and earlier “before” with old windows, bushes, etc. {Roof is new, so this “before” isn’t even the official first “before.”}

Eugene made a good point; he said it’s funny that the house doesn’t look that much different now because the garage door doesn’t catch your attention {in a bad way} anymore. ;)

Safer. Prettier. Cleaner. Happier.