The Garage Door Debacle

One source of unpleasant surprises when we bought our house was the garage door. The first surprise was that it had no garage door opener. Our house isn’t that old, I found the lack of garage door opener to be ridiculous. I suppose it should have been a warning sign of the type of owner we were buying a house from, someone who would buy a brand new house but skimp on the details.

I decided that my house would indeed have a garage door opener, and it would have it the day I moved in. I arranged for an opener to be bought and installed right before closing. My realtor said he had two guys who could do the installation, one guy who was an awesome contractor but was sometimes expensive. The other guy was his handyman who was cheap but wasn’t always as professional. I was assured that the handyman “always got the job done.” I opted for the more expensive contractor (twice as expensive) because I suspected the handyman always got the job done in spite of his own bumbling incompetence.

The second garage surprise was a bait and switch. Evidently the awesome contractor had a scheduling conflict, so instead of rescheduling the job my realtor gave the installation to his handyman. This made me very upset. The realtor defended himself by pointing out that he got the job done on time and it cost me less than if the other guy had done it. The job also looked like it had been done by a shaved baboon whose principle tool was a mud covered stick that he used to beat the garage door into place. There were greasy fingerprints all over the place, wires sticking out of places that were suspect, metal brackets that were bent at strange angles instead of being trimmed. The whole job was ghetto. I made him come out and clean up some of the work. After meeting him I decided that he was such a distasteful person that I would finish cleaning up the work myself, just so minimize my contact with him.

The third garage surprise was when we actually moved in there was a discarded garage door opener sitting on the garage floor. Evidently the previous owner had a nasty-ass decrepit garage door opener at wherever he was moving to, he decided to replace that one and leave the nasty one at his old house. I suppose it was just easier for us to throw it away than it was for him to throw it away. However, if he was being lazy, why did he expend the effort to get the damn thing over to our house? Very strange. We didn’t like the previous owner so we decided it was just easier to throw it away then ask him what his damage was.

The fourth garage door related surprise was last night the opener ceased working. Evidently the opener must remain connected to the garage door in order for the system to operate correctly. This is, unfortunately, not the case. It seems that the shaved baboon sometimes used the screws he was given in the kit and sometimes used little trinkets from the fur pouch he kept around his neck. (I’m not saying he actually had a fur pouch around his neck…but I imagine him having one. He probably keeps bits of bone and especially intriguing rocks in it.) I already knew that he would sometimes save time by inserting one screw into a bracket instead of the recommended three (imagine the time savings!) I guess he decided wood screws would work well in our aluminum garage door. Funny how they backed out over time.

Sufficed to say, I hate that baboon. I’m also tempted to punch our realtor if I ever see him again.