I regret that I didn’t take a proper “before” shot of my rotted garage door situation. It was truly awful. As you can see in this picture, the trim was rotten, the siding near the garage door was ratty, and the whole thing just looks bad. What you can’t quite make out is the extent of the damage. The plywood under the siding was water damaged, the first 6 pieces of siding were damaged, the 2 2X4’s under the garage door jamb were rotten several inches from the bottom and there was a big enough space there that I had to block up the hole with a brick just to keep a chipmunk from exploring our garage. Obviously, something had to be done.

So, I did the following:

1. I stripped off the old trim and thermo-strip, removed the lower section of garage door track, and then cut through the jamb and one of the underlying 2X4’s 9 inches up from the ground, removing the rotten wood sections.

2. The 2X4 that I kept in place was only a little rotten at the bottom so I scraped all the soft wood away and applied resin wood hardener to the remaining stump. After the hardener had set I filled in the remaining missing part of the piece of wood with epoxy putty.

3. I pried off the lower 6 cedar siding boards and exposed the underlying plywood. I cut out the entire section of water damaged plywood, replaced it with treated plywood and then put on fresh cedar siding, which I installed over a protective water-shielding underlayment.

4. I replaced the lower section of the jamb and the other 9-inches of 2X4 with pressure treated lumber sections cut to fit. I used the wood hardening resin on the bottom of both of those pieces to minimize future “wicking” action by the wood that lead to the rot in the first place.

5. I installed a new plastic-composite thermo-strip and brick molding to replace the old stuff.

It hasn’t been painted yet, but I’m very happy with the results:

Up next: the other side of the garage door and then two rotten spots on the roof. Fun fun fun!

More From Ryan Sutter

Recommend [RyanSutter]

Related posts