Garage of Death

OK, so maybe that is a bit of a dramatic spin. But it was a rather scary flirtation with the idea that if I was a less capable individual, this situation could have been deadly.

Here is how it happened:

I went out to the garage to look for a particular piece of fringe inventory. When I lifted the garage door, it got stuck about a foot and a half from the ground. I crawled underneath and realized that I would need a flashlight to asses the situation since there are no windows or doors in the space other than the garage door itself. I went in the house and found a pen light and I also grabbed a hammer and a 2x4 from the workshop. Since the ground there is very dirty, I first laid a car floormat underneath so the wriggle under the lip would be slightly less disgusting. Once inside, it appeared obvious to me that the spring mechanism on one side had a fowled up cable but to get at it I would have to close the garage door all the way. I pushed the door shut with my foot and assessed the damage.

I remember when the door was installed that the guy had some difficulty due to the fact that the door was less than square and it was tight quarters to work in. I also remember him telling me that these springs and cables were dangerous to work with because the wrong "sproing" could send metal flying. It looked to me that the cable had somehow come unspooled from one pulley. I used a metal rod as a lever to try to get it spooled back on but it was clear that that was not going to happen. There was not enough room to get leverage. Then I noticed that the door had slid a bid crooked. It was tighter to one side than the other. So I used the 2x4 to try and pry it back to center position. It was clearly not going to budge. I tried hammering on one of the wheel shafts, also to no avail. Clearly this was a job for a professional. I knelt down to lift the door. But you guessed it... The door would not budge more than an inch or two.

By this time I had worked up a sweat. In fact I was soaked due to the 90+ degree day and the closed quarters. I was feeling like I could really use a glass of water. I felt in my pocket for my cell phone but realized that I had left it inside the house. I was stuck!

For the next 45 minutes I tried prying, bending, pounding and shaking various garage door parts to see what might be the key to the jam up. Eventually I discovered that the door was pushed far enough to one side that it was on the outside of the curved part of the track. Lifting the door merely wedged it tighter.

This is when I started to think about my loved ones discovering my dehydrated body lying on the dirty floor of a 100 degree garage with a door that would not open. It was clear that I would have to break out. I had no screwdrivers or wrenches so it would have to be a lever vs. bendable or breakable materials.

I pried one of the bottom wheels out of the track and discovered that I could bend the aluminum panel at the bottom just enough so that I could prop a block under the corner and crawl under.



Here is what it looks like now. Note the bent in corner.

By the way, the wooden stool I was looking for yesterday is in there.