About Burnsidewriterscollective

The Garages Everybody Else Quotes Wrong

Burnsidewriterscollective works on garage doors across Long Beach, and most of what we do is on buildings that were finished long before anybody wrote a specification for a sectional door. We are on Del Amo Blvd in the 90813 ZIP.

A large share of this city went up between the first war and the second. The garages that came with those houses are detached, often off an alley, usually single, and built to hold a car that was narrower and shorter than anything on the road now. They were framed by whoever was cheapest, and they have had eighty years of settlement, dry rot, additions and quiet repairs since.

Why That Needs a Specialist

Modern garage door hardware is designed around assumptions. Twelve inches of headroom above the opening. A square opening with plumb jambs. A header stout enough to carry a wound torsion spring. Enough depth behind the opening for horizontal track and an opener rail.

Break any one of those and the standard kit stops working. Break three of them, which is normal on a 1930s garage, and a company that only stocks standard kit will either walk away or bodge it. Neither helps you.

What We Actually Do About It

We measure before we quote, and we measure the things that matter rather than just the opening. Clearance to the lowest obstruction, not to the ceiling. Depth to the back wall. Whether the jambs are plumb and by how much. What the header is made of and what it is doing.

Then we specify hardware that fits the building as it stands. Low headroom track, jackshaft openers, packed jambs, a proper spring pad added where there was never one.

Where We Stop

If the framing will not safely carry a door and a wound spring, we say so and we stop. That is a builder’s job before it is ours, and pretending otherwise puts a heavy moving object over your car.

Call (562) 956-2676.