Wood and carriage-house garage doors in Wichita

The old carriage houses had pairs of doors hung on strap hinges that swung out into the yard. Today's carriage-house garage door borrows that face and nothing else: it is a sectional door that rolls up overhead on tracks, works with any opener, and needs no clearance in front of it.

What sells the look is the face of the door. A center seam that suggests two leaves, vertical boards or crossbucks below, a row of windows across the top row, and black handles and hinge straps fixed to the outside. The working hinges and rollers stay on the inside, where the weather cannot get at them.

The windows in that top row can be clear, frosted or seeded glass, and insulated units keep them from frosting over on the coldest mornings. On a door facing the street, frosted glass lets in daylight without showing what is stored inside.

Most carriage doors that go up here are steel or composite with a wood grain pressed into the skin, and for good reason. A thick steel skin wrapped around an insulated core is stiff enough to resist the wind and tough enough to shrug off small hail, and the grain texture hides the dings that do happen.

Those doors are finished in stain-like tones or painted colors, they do not split or swell, and they need no refinishing. From the curb, a well-chosen wood-look door reads as wood to almost everyone who walks past.

The same insulated core keeps the garage warmer on January mornings and cooler on hundred-degree afternoons, which the rooms next to the garage notice.

Real wood still has a place, usually on a house where nothing else will look right. It is heavy, it moves with the seasons, and on the plains its finish takes a beating from sun, wind-blown grit and freeze-thaw cycles. A wood door here needs its finish renewed every few years, and sooner on a door that faces south or west.

Hail treats wood differently from steel. It leaves softer marks, but it can split boards along the grain where the wood has dried out, so the condition of the finish matters even more on a wood door than on a painted steel one.

That is all laid out before anything is ordered, so the choice is made knowing what the door will ask of you.

The newer houses out west often have a double door beside a single, or a three-car garage with one wide door. A carriage pattern can be laid out across a wide door so the seams line up with the singles beside it, which keeps the front of the house from looking like three different doors.

On a wide door, struts across the upper rows are part of the plan from the start. A carriage door with heavy decorative hardware and no bracing will bow in a strong gust, and struts keep it flat and its rollers seated.

The fifties ranches on the east side carry a carriage door well when the pattern stays simple: plain vertical boards, a short row of square windows, and dark hardware. Busier patterns with arched tops and heavy crossbucks tend to suit the larger two-story houses on the newer streets better.

Color does as much work as the pattern. A walnut or cedar tone warms up brick and stone, while a painted door in the trim color lets the carriage details carry the look. Darker finishes fade faster on a sunny wall, which is worth weighing for a door that faces west.

A carriage door with an insulated core weighs more than the thin builder door it usually replaces, and real wood weighs more still. Springs are sized to the new door's actual weight, cables and drums are matched to them, and the opener is checked to see whether it can lift the heavier door smoothly.

Where a new opener makes sense, one with battery backup is suggested, since storms take the power out here and a heavy door is harder to raise by hand. It appears as its own line, separate from the door.

The door is chosen against the house, then built around the wind and its own weight.

1. Measured and assessedOpening, headroom and side room measured, and the exposure noted: open ground, a field or a sheltered lot.
2. Style and finish chosenCarriage patterns, colors and window layouts shown against the house, with the free estimate in writing.
3. Hung and bracedOld door removed, new rows hung, struts added where the width and exposure call for them.
4. Balanced and handed overSprings set to the new weight, opener adjusted, and the reverse shown working before the truck leaves.

Carriage doors fail in the same places other doors do, plus a few of their own. Decorative handles and straps loosen in the wind, rows bow on wide doors without bracing, and hail creases a row near a hinge so it binds overhead.

Loose hardware is refastened, a bowing door gets struts, and a creased row is replaced on its own when the design is still made. On wood doors, a soft bottom rail can be rebuilt when the rest of the wood is sound, and a replacement option is written up beside the repair when it is not.