New Garage Door Installation for Sherrelwood's 1966-Era Homes

What It Costs

We don't quote a number here because the honest answer depends on what's behind your current door - and in Sherrelwood, what's behind it is usually original hardware from a house built around 1966. That changes the job. A straight swap onto a track and header that are still square costs less than a swap where we're also reframing an opening that's settled or rebuilding a jamb that's rotted from decades of uninsulated contact with a cold slab. We price the job after we've opened the door and looked at the header, not off a phone call. What we can tell you up front: single doors cost less than double doors, insulated steel costs more than non-insulated steel, and if your opener is also original, replacing it alongside the door is cheaper done together than as two separate truck trips from Golden. Ask for a written number before any work starts, and ask what it does and doesn't include - trim, haul-away of the old door, and any header repair should all be spelled out, not folded into a vague total.

Why It Happens Here

Sherrelwood's housing stock centers on 1966, which puts most of these garages a decade or more ahead of the double-layer insulated steel door that became common construction-grade practice later. A lot of what's still hanging in these openings is a single layer of thin steel or old wood composite, on hardware sized for a lighter, uninsulated panel. That's a mismatch for a cold-severe climate: the door itself does almost nothing to stop heat loss, and the original rollers and hinges were never built to carry a heavier, modern insulated replacement without some adjustment to the track and spring. Across the wider service area the housing runs 1938 to 1997 with a median closer to 1975, so Sherrelwood sits on the older end of that range - which means when we show up for an install here, we're more often also dealing with a bent track, a worn jamb seal, or a header that was framed for a lighter door than the one going back in.

How to Book

We run this job from Golden, about 13 miles out, so we schedule the install as a planned appointment rather than a same-day stop - call ahead and we'll set a date. Tell us the door size and whether you want insulated or non-insulated steel, single or double, and whether the opener needs replacing too; that lets us bring the right header hardware and track length on the first trip instead of a second one. If you're not sure what's wrong with your current door, or whether it's worth replacing versus repairing, our repair page covers that side of the decision. For the full list of what we install and service out of Golden, see our installation page.

What You Are Seeing

If your door is original to a 1966-built house, you're likely looking at a single steel skin with no foam core, visible rust at the bottom panel where snowmelt sits against it, and a spring system - usually extension springs mounted along the horizontal track rather than a torsion bar over the header. That layout was standard for the era but is less common in newer installs, and it means the door sags or binds differently than a torsion setup when a cable stretches. Cold-severe winters are hard on that kind of door: the steel contracts, seams open slightly, and the bottom seal that was fine in summer lets a draft through by January. None of that is a crisis, but it's worth knowing before you pick a replacement - an insulated door with a torsion spring over the opening handles our winters with less yearly adjustment than a repeat of what's currently up there.

Where This Job Goes Sideways

The trouble spot on these older Sherrelwood openings is almost always the header and jamb, not the door itself. A door built in 1966 was framed to a specific rough opening, and over nearly sixty years that framing can shift - a header that's bowed an inch doesn't show from the driveway but it will bind a brand-new door on day one. We measure the opening before we quote, but sometimes the real shape only shows up once the old door and track come down. When that happens, the job stops being a swap and becomes a small carpentry job first. We'll tell you before we proceed, and we won't install a new door into an opening we know is out of square - a door that doesn't sit right will fail its springs or rollers early, and that's a callback nobody wants.

Stocked Parts

We carry the current sizes and track hardware that fit most modern openings, which covers the bulk of what Sherrelwood needs since most of these homes still use a standard single or double garage width. What we don't keep on the truck is anything custom to a non-standard 1966 opening - an odd header height or a narrowed jamb from a past remodel. If your opening needs a part cut or framed to size, that's a return trip once we've measured on site, not a same-visit fix. We'd rather tell you that up front than promise a one-trip job and miss it.

Frequently asked questions