The Hard Way: Unending garage door repairs and the adventures of wannabe handymen

It’s no secret: I’m no handyman.

Sure, I know my way around a car to a point. I can tell when the brakes are wearing thin or if there’s a problem with the spark plugs. I can even change the oil myself, should the need arise.

Beyond that, forget it. I’m calling a mechanic.

So, when our garage door opener broke down, I deduced the problem without much trouble. The gear and sprocket mechanism – which pulled the chain that pulled the door – snapped.

Rather than call a mechanic straight away, I researched the cost of such a part. Perhaps it was something I could find on my own and maybe, just maybe, even repair myself.

And, in turn, save myself a few hundred dollars.

The problem, of course, was my aforementioned lack of handyman skills. Add to that the full-time work of parenting a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old, and my spare time to work on such a project equally limited.

I needed help.

I needed assistance.

I needed … my father.

As it happened, he and I worked together on a similar issue with his garage door several years prior. I hoped our combined experience would make up for my limited skillset.

Trouble was, this happened at the onset of winter. Not only was the garage freezing, but we both had travel commitments for the holidays. He had to visit my siblings, and I had to visit my in-laws.

So, the garage remained out of order for several months.

I ordered a replacement gear and sprocket mechanism, but it sat on my desk for the remainder of 2021 and half of 2022. Each day, it stared at me while I worked, a silent reminder of the job I still needed to do.

My wife also made of point of mentioning it now and then.

(She wasn’t silent, though.)

When, at last, time and scheduled allowed – just before spring gave way to the punishing blaze that's b this year’s summer – my father and I met to confront and overcome this daunting task once and for all. Beads of sweat formed on our foreheads before we even started, and we wondered if maybe those freezing conditions we once feared might not be so bad.

That no longer mattered, though. All that mattered was the task at hand. The brutal, punishing, rage-fueled, insanity-inducing task at hand.

What would likely take a typical handyman an hour or less to complete took us several days. Taking the opener down took an hour. Replacing the gear and sprocket took several more hours. Returning the opener to its perch on the ceiling took even more hours.

Then, there was the chain.

The vile, wretched, accursed chain.

We spent several more hours re-wrapping it around the mechanism. Then, when it failed to pull open the door, we spent even more hours un-wrapping and re-wrapping again.

When it failed again, I felt a combination of despair and rage wash over me like a tsunami that was at once both deathly cold and boiling hot. I was tired. I was frustrated. I was angry.

And I was sad.

“I’m calling it,” I told my father, at last. “We’re done.”

He wiped fresh sweat from his brow and asked what I meant.

“I’m calling a mechanic.”

Reach Matt Schorr at mattschorr@hotmail.com, on Twitter at @themattschorr and on Instagram at @theschorr. His website is www.mattschorr.net.

This article originally appeared on Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle: The Hard Way: Unending garage door repairs and the adventures of wannabe handymen