Quick & Easy DIY Garage Door Upgrade

Like many of you, we have had tons of little home improvement and DIY projects this summer.

We (ok me) seem to always be tinkering away at some project or another- so much so that I often feel like Norm at Cheers when I hit the local Home Depot store.

This was one little project we did several months ago that is so affordable and so easy I wanted to mention it to you.  This is a great way to add a little more curb appeal to your home.

One of the things we did this summer was replace the garage door.  The prior homeowner had run into the garage door with a car (yes I am serious) and put a dent in it.  The dent created issues with the support of the door and after band aid repairs for about 2 years we finally needed to replace the whole darn thing for safety issues.

Replacing your garage door can be a little bit spendy and we did quite a bit of research.  We wanted the swanky doors with windows and fancy hardware and such but finally settled on a fairly plain door that matched what we had previously. (To the tune of $1500- boo!)

Once that was installed my husband surprised me by coming home with a little hardware kit.  The kits can be found for about $35 at stores like Lowe’s and Home Depot and they are often found near the new garage doors.   They have fancy names like “Decorative Garage Door Strap Hinges” and such. They are super easy to install and it turns a plain garage door into a carriage style door for a fraction of the price.

I thought it was a really nice improvement and makes the plain door we bought look much more expensive.

So here is the before shot:

So just a subtle little change but I think it makes a big difference.  And believe it or not we didn’t paint the garage door- I just shot pics a few hours apart and holy cow that made a big difference!

And to install the hardware is super easy- it took about 30 minutes for my husband to do it.

You simply place your hardware onto the garage and mark your holes. Drill a few small pilot holes in the garage door.

And then mount the hardware and drill in the screws.  It attachs firmly to the door- these have been on our garage for several months now and you can see they lay perfectly flat.

And here is one more before picture of the entire house:

And after:

Has anyone else purchased one of these kits?  You can take a look at Home Depot.com and just search for Garage Hardware and several options will come up.  I can see similar hardware sets for just $20!   Order online and pick up in store to make things super easy.

Check out my Home Board on Pinterest for lots more ideas to jazz up your house.