Garage Door Repair
The catch-all call. Door will not open, will not close, opens halfway, or something snapped. We diagnose the whole system rather than swapping the first broken part we see.
Read moreEST. 2011 Evanston, Illinois
Garage door repair in Evanston, built for old alleys and older doors
Four in ten Evanston homes were built before 1940, and most of them park behind a detached garage on an alley. We have spent fifteen years learning what that does to springs, tracks and bottom rails — and we carry the parts for it on the van.
- Owner-operated from a shop on Brown Avenue since 2011
- Springs, cables, rollers and openers stocked on every truck
- Nineteen neighborhoods and suburbs, all under ten road miles
- A technician answers the phone and gives you a straight answer
01 Why we know this market
Evanston is not a generic garage door town
The city keeps more than 300 unpaved alleys graded each spring to knock out the ruts and standing water that build up behind them. If your garage opens onto one of those, you already know what it does to a door: the slab shifts out of level, one side of the track picks up load the other side does not, rollers start to bind, and the bottom rail sits in water every time it rains hard.
Add the housing stock. The Census puts 40% of Evanston homes before 1940 and around 70% before 1970. That means original eight-foot openings, low headroom under old rafters, and header framing that has been carrying a door for eighty years. Half the national playbook for garage door repair simply does not apply.
We built this business around that, not around easy new-build work in the far suburbs. Read more about how we started, or go straight to our repair service.
01b The Evanston picture
Numbers that explain your garage door
40.3%
of Evanston housing units were built before 1940 — the narrow-opening, low-headroom era.
300+
unpaved alleys the City grades each spring to reduce ruts and ponding behind garages.
121
days a year the temperature drops below freezing at the nearest official climate station.
501
detached garages counted by the City in the Lakeshore Historic District alone.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts, CMAP community data, City of Evanston alley maintenance, NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals and the City's Lakeshore Historic District resource inventory.
02 What we fix
Garage door services across Evanston and the North Shore
Fifteen things we get called about, from a spring that let go at 6am to a full replacement door on a 1920s detached garage. Every one is its own page, because every one is a different job.
Repair & Installation
Broken Spring Repair
The most common failure in a Chicago-area winter, and the one you should not attempt yourself. Torsion and extension springs, matched to your door's actual weight.
Read moreGarage Door Opener Repair
Motor runs and nothing moves, door reverses on the way down, remote works but the wall button does not. Usually cheaper to fix than to replace.
Read moreGarage Door Installation
New doors on old openings, including the awkward 1920s sizes nobody stocks. We measure headroom, backroom and side clearance before we quote anything.
Read moreGarage Door Replacement
When a repair is throwing money at a door that has already failed twice. We will tell you honestly which side of that line you are on.
Read moreGarage Door Opener Installation
Belt drives for attached garages, wall-mount jackshaft units for old detached garages with no ceiling room to give away.
Read moreEmergency Garage Door Repair
Door stuck open overnight, car trapped inside, or a spring that went off like a shotgun. Call and we will tell you truthfully when we can be there.
Read moreComponent Repairs
Garage Door Cable Repair
Frayed, snapped, or jumped off the drum. Cables fail quietly for months before they fail loudly, and they take the door out of level when they do.
Read moreGarage Door Roller Repair
Steel rollers with worn bearings are the number-one cause of a garage door that sounds like a freight train at 6am.
Read moreGarage Door Track Repair
Bent, spread, or knocked out of plumb — usually by a bumper, sometimes by a settling slab in an alley garage.
Read moreGarage Door Panel Replacement
One damaged section on an otherwise sound door. Worth doing when the door is newer, worth reconsidering when it is not.
Read moreOff-Track Garage Doors
The door that came off its rollers and is now leaning into your car. Stop using the opener and call us before it comes down further.
Read moreNoisy Garage Door Repair
Bangs, squeals, grinding, or a pop at the top of travel. Each noise points at a different part, and we can usually name it over the phone.
Read moreBy Property Type
Residential Garage Doors
Detached alley garages, attached two-car garages, coach houses and above-garage ADUs. Different buildings, different hardware.
Read moreCommercial Garage Doors
Condo parking decks downtown, loading bays on the west side, and rolling steel on Howard Street storefronts.
Read more03 How a call works
Four steps, no surprises in the middle
We are a call-only shop. There is no form to fill in and no automated quote engine, because you cannot price a garage door properly without knowing what is on the wall.
You call and describe it
Tell us what the door is doing and roughly how old it is. Most faults can be narrowed down to two or three causes on the phone, and we will tell you which.
We tell you when we can come
An honest window, not a marketing promise. If we cannot get there today we will say so rather than book you and slide.
We diagnose the whole system
Springs, cables, drums, rollers, track, hinges, opener, safety sensors and the door itself. A door is a balanced system and one failure usually has a cause.
You approve the work first
You get the fault, the options, and what each one costs before a tool comes out. If the honest answer is that the door is finished, we say that too.
Prefer to see the detail first? Start with the full service list or read why springs break in January.
04 Who turns up
Two founders, still on the trucks
Nate Sorensen grew up in south Evanston, in a house with the standard arrangement: a narrow 1920s garage at the back of the lot, opening onto an alley that flooded. He spent his twenties working for a large north-suburban door company that wanted new-construction sixteen-by-sevens in the far suburbs and treated an odd-sized alley garage as a nuisance call.
In 2011 he and Chris Duvall — who had spent a decade on commercial overhead doors and parking-deck gates — opened their own shop specifically to take the jobs that outfit did not want. Fifteen years later that is still the business.
- Locally owned and operated, not a franchise territory
- Founders still run service calls, not just estimates
- Common spring sizes and roller sets carried on every van
- We work a tight radius so same-day actually means same day
05 Where we work
19 neighborhoods and suburbs, all inside a short run from Brown Avenue
We are not a franchise covering half of Illinois. Our whole service map fits inside about ten road miles of the shop, which is the only honest way to promise a truck the same day.
Evanston Neighborhoods
- Downtown Evanston
- Northeast Evanston
- Central Street
- North Evanston
- West Evanston
- Southeast Evanston
- South Evanston
Nearby Suburbs & Chicago
06 How we work
The things we will tell you that other companies will not
Garage door repair has a reputation problem in the Chicago market, and it is largely earned. Here is how we try to be the opposite of that.
When not to replace the door
A twelve-year-old steel door with one dented section usually needs one panel, not four thousand dollars of new door. We will say so even though the bigger job pays better.
When the opener is not the problem
Most people who call about a dead opener actually have a broken spring. The motor is fine — it simply cannot lift an unbalanced door. Diagnosing that first saves you an opener you did not need.
When you should call the City first
If your garage sits in one of Evanston's landmark districts, exterior work visible from the alley can need review. We will point you at Historic Preservation before you order a door you cannot install.
What we will not touch
We do not put a new door on rotten header framing, and we do not band-aid a track that is bent because the slab has dropped. Both come back, and they come back worse.
Why we do not quote by phone
Door weight, headroom, backroom, drum size and spring cycle rating all change the number. Anyone quoting a firm price sight-unseen is either guessing or planning to revise it in your driveway.
What safety actually means here
Photo-eye sensors and auto-reverse are not optional extras. We test both on every visit, and we follow the DASMA safety guidance on force settings rather than turning them up to hide a mechanical fault.
06b Winter, specifically
What a North Shore winter does to a garage door
The nearest official climate station records 121 days a year with a low at or below freezing and an average January high of 31.6°F — meaning the temperature crosses the freezing point and back again through most of midwinter. That cycle is what wrecks garage doors here. Water gets under the bottom seal during a thaw and freezes the door to the slab overnight; the opener then tries to tear it free and strips a gear or bends the top section.
Then there is salt. Evanston reported spreading 3,377 tons of granular salt and 52,616 gallons of brine across 190 miles of road in one recent winter. Every bit of that comes home on your tyres and boots into an unheated detached garage, where it sits on springs, hinges, rollers and bottom brackets.
None of it is unusual, and none of it is your fault. It just means a door here needs looking at more often than one in a milder market. We wrote up the full picture in our winter maintenance guide.
07 Questions we get asked
Straight answers about garage door repair in Evanston
The questions we answer most often on the phone, written out properly.
How quickly can you get to my garage door in Evanston?
<p>It depends on the day and what has already come in, which is why we will not print a guaranteed response time. What we will do is tell you honestly on the phone when a truck can be there. Our whole service area sits inside about ten road miles of the shop on Brown Avenue, so most Evanston, Skokie and Wilmette calls are reachable the same day. If your door is stuck open and the garage is not secure, say so when you call — that changes where you sit in the queue.</p>
My garage door will not open and the opener just clicks. What is wrong?
<p>Nine times out of ten in this market, a broken torsion spring. The opener is a positioning motor, not a lifting motor — the springs carry the door's weight, and when one snaps the motor is trying to lift 150 to 350 pounds it was never designed to move. Go and look at the shaft above the door. If you see a clean gap in the coil, that is your answer. Do not keep pressing the button, and do not try to lift the door by hand, because it will come down fast. <a href="/services/broken-spring-repair/">Spring replacement</a> is a same-visit job for us; we carry the common sizes.</p>
Do you charge to come out and look at the door?
<p>There is a service call charge for a diagnostic visit, and we tell you what it is when you book rather than after we arrive. If you go ahead with the repair on the same visit, that charge is applied against the work. We do not publish a price list on this site because a garage door quote depends on door weight, spring cycle rating, headroom and what else has been damaged — anyone giving you a firm number over the phone is guessing.</p>
Can you fit a modern door to my old detached garage?
<p>Usually, yes, but it is a measuring job rather than a catalogue job. Older Evanston garages often have an eight-foot or nine-foot opening rather than the modern sixteen-foot double, plus limited headroom between the top of the opening and the rafters. There are low-headroom track kits and wall-mount openers designed for exactly this. What we will not do is force a standard kit into a space that cannot take it. See <a href="/services/garage-door-installation/">our installation page</a> or read <a href="/blog/narrow-1920s-garage-door-openings-evanston/">the guide to narrow 1920s openings</a>.</p>
Do I need a permit to replace a garage door in Evanston?
<p>Requirements change, so check with the City rather than taking our word for it — <a href="https://www.cityofevanston.org/residents/permits_licenses.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">Evanston's permits and licences page</a> is the place to start, or call 311. The one thing worth knowing up front: if your property is a local landmark or sits inside one of Evanston's landmark districts, exterior alterations visible from a public way can require a Certificate of Appropriateness, and the City counts an alley as a public way. That catches people out on alley-facing garages in the Lakeshore, Ridge and Northeast Evanston districts. Ask before you order the door, not after.</p>
Do you work on commercial doors as well as houses?
<p>Yes. Chris came out of the commercial side and it is still a big share of what we do: sectional overhead doors on condo parking decks downtown, loading bays in the west-side industrial belt near McCormick, rolling steel security shutters on Howard Street and Dempster storefronts, and gate operators. <a href="/services/commercial-garage-doors/">Our commercial page</a> covers the difference in hardware and why a residential opener does not belong on a fifty-cycle-a-day door.</p>
Is it worth repairing an old wood garage door or should I replace it?
<p>It depends on what has failed and whether the door is original to a house you care about the look of. A wood door that has swollen and stuck in humid weather but is structurally sound is worth keeping. A wood door with a rotted bottom rail, delaminating panels and hardware pulling out of soft timber has reached the end, and money spent on it is money you will spend again. We will give you the honest version in the driveway, including when the answer is that we would keep it if it were ours.</p>
Which areas do you actually cover?
<p>All of Evanston, plus Skokie, Wilmette, Kenilworth, Winnetka, Glencoe, Glenview, Morton Grove, Niles, Lincolnwood, Park Ridge, and the Chicago neighborhoods of Rogers Park and Edgewater. That is deliberately a tight radius — we would rather cover a small area properly than list forty suburbs we cannot reach the same week. <a href="/locations/">The full service area is here</a>.</p>
08 From the workshop
Garage door advice written by the people holding the winding bars
No listicles. These are the explanations we end up giving in driveways, written down properly so you can read them before you call anyone.
What an Evanston alley does to your garage door
The City grades more than 300 unpaved alleys every spring. Here is what standing water, ruts and a settling slab actually do to the door at the end of your lot — and the right order to fix it in.
Fitting a modern door to a 1920s Evanston garage
Four in ten Evanston homes predate 1940, and their garages have eight-foot openings and almost no headroom. Here is how to measure yours properly, and what actually works when the ceiling is in the way.
Road salt and your garage door: a North Shore winter guide
There is no salt air on Lake Michigan — it is fresh water. The corrosion problem here is the 3,377 tons of road salt Evanston spreads each winter, and it arrives in your garage on your own tyres.
Garage door stuck, loud, or off its tracks?
One call reaches the people who will actually be doing the work. Tell us what the door is doing and we will tell you straight what it needs — and when we can get a truck to you.