Storing your wooden gates and garage doors
If you do not intend to fit your wooden gates, doors or garage doors straight away, and let’s face it, it’s not always possible due to the weather or waiting for your Joiner to come and hang them for you, then storing your gates or garage doors can be as equally important as having them fitted correctly.
Once you’ve taken delivery of the garage doors or gates, you should unpack them as soon as possible to inspect them. Remove all the packaging from the doors or gates, but don’t throw the packaging away just yet as it will come in handy later.
How should you store your gates & garage doors
Ideally the gates or garage doors should be stored in a garage/outbuilding or shed that is free from damp.
Also, avoid any building that is subject to temperature extremes (this includes any centrally heated rooms – storing your finished gates here will cause you problems) and store out of direct sunlight away from any windows.
Whether you intend to install your gates or doors straight away or store them, you should get a least one coat of your chosen finish – doing this will help to protect the gates/doors during storage. When we send our gates out for delivery, they have protection pieces fitted to the bottom of the stiles (the vertical uprights that make up the framework of the gates); these should be removed to enable the coating of the timber directly underneath these protection blocks.
Again, when we dispatch our garage doors and doors, these also have protection timbers affixed to the vertical stiles – in the case of the doors, these protection pieces are on both the top and bottom of each stiles. As with the gates, these should be removed to enable you to completely coat the doors in your chosen finish. These blocks can be affixed back to the gates or doors once your paint or stain has dried – just remember to remove them once your door or gates have been fitted!
A guide to storing your new gates
For any gates or doors up to 6ft (1830mm) tall you will need at least three timber bearers or skids to sit on the floor. For gates or doors under 4ft (1220mm), then two bearers should suffice and for anything over 7ft tall (2130mm) you should use four or more bearers.
1. For a gate or door up to 6ft (1830mm) high, you will need three pieces of timber that are at least 4″ (100mm) longer than the gates to be stored and at least 3 3/4″ (95mm) wide. All the timbers must be the same width.
2. Lay the bearers/skids down on a level, flat floor (give the floor a brush to remove anything likely to obstruct the bearers once they are in contact with the floor) so that they sit up off the floor the 3 3/4″ (95mm) way (i.e. from the piece of timber in contact with the floor to the top edge of the timber should be at least 3 3/4″ / 95mm).
3. Bearers should be laid out so whatever is placed upon them is out of direct sunlight and out of the way of any leaky roofs etc.
4. Once the bearers/skids are in the correct positions, make sure they sit flat on the floor. You can do this by pressing down alternately on either end of the bearer. If you press down on one end the bearer moves up or down then the floor is not flat and you should choose a flatter area of floor!
5. Space them equally so the bottom bearer is near the bottom of the gates/doors, the middle bearer near the middle of the gates/doors etc.
6. Then lay the gate/door down upon the bearers, you may need to get somebody to give you a lift to do this.
7. If you are storing more than one gate or door, then lay additional bearers down on top of the door or gate directly above the first layer of bearers that are in contact with the floor.
8. With the packaging that you saved when you unpacked the gates/doors, cover up the doors/gates as best you can for some additional protection.
If you’ve followed all the above steps, it should look like something in the image above.
The gaps underneath the gates/door help the air circulate around the gates/doors and stops any moisture lying on the floor coming into contact with the gates.
Cannot lie the gates flat?
By far the best way to store your gates and doors is to lie them flat, if you’ve not got the room to store them flat, then they can be stood up and leant against a solid wall or similar, but ideally, not for too long.
1. Again, cut a couple of pieces of timber; these only need to be approx 12″ (300mm) long – but they need to be the same thickness.
2. Place the bearers down on the floor against a wall or other solid structure, far enough apart so the gate or doors can sit upon them.
3. Sit the gate or door upon the bearers (as shown below), making sure the top of the two gate or doors stiles (vertical uprights of the main frame) are sitting securely against the wall – i.e. push against each corner alternately; if when pushed against, the door or gates wobble, then re-place the gate or doors to stop this.
Again, if you’ve followed the steps above, the gap underneath the gates allows air to circulate and stops the gates coming into any contact with any moisture lying on the floor.
