Expert Garage Door Repair,
Service, & Installation in
Folsom, CA

Folsom's Historic District has its own written guide to garage doors, and an owner there does well to read it before choosing a replacement door, not after.

Replacing a garage door in Folsom's Historic District starts with the city, not with a catalog. The Planning Division's guide to common residential projects in the district says a project that involves only modifying the garage door requires director-level design review, and it says that review typically takes at least 3 weeks from a complete application. Whether a particular door needs that review is for the Planning Division to confirm, and it is worth asking before anything is ordered. On a building permit, the same guide's answer is no, unless the size of the garage door opening is being revised. One more case is worth checking first: the city code sends exterior modifications on properties listed in its Cultural Resources Inventory, or that are an existing or potentially eligible historic resource, to the Historic District Commission, and the city gives commission-level review a typical time of at least two to three months.

The city's written criteria are about the look of the door. Generally, the guide says, a garage door in the district should have the appearance of a traditional carriage house door and should not be the modern paneled metal one, which can mean hinges and handles on the face and an appearance that is or imitates wood board construction. Metal is acceptable on a home there if the door is similar in appearance to a traditional wood door and uses the carriage style, metal hinges and door handles included, and suits the architectural style and period of the house. A two-car door must be broken up to look like two single-car doors, through features such as two sets of traditional hardware, a center divide, or both. Windows may go in the top portion only, in clear glass no more than two rows of panes deep and in a style like a traditional gridded window, never glazed or tinted. The finish has to come from a traditional color palette. And the Historic District Commission's resolution rules out, anywhere in the district, modern garage doors that are primarily glass or translucent glass.

The Persifer-Dean Subarea is the exception the guide spells out. The guide allows it plain doors, paneled doors and doors with single-pane glass windows, and a two-car door there may look like a single door. The door still has to suit the architectural style of the house.

So in the district, the choosing comes before the ordering: settle the carriage look, the hardware, where the glass sits and the color, and decide whether the opening stays its present size, since that is the one change the guide ties to a building permit. Fixing the door you have is a different conversation, and the first clue is what it does on an ordinary run up and down — on the way to a game at Folsom High School, say, or out to see the 1895 plant at Folsom Powerhouse State Historic Park. Tell us where it hesitates, scrapes or stops, and that is where the visit begins.