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  • Beautiful Brazilian Garage Doors

    These beautiful doors from São Paulo, a Brazilian city, show a high level of craftsmanship and an originality that really makes them stand out from the surroundings. The custom wood and metal work gives each door a distinctive feel to match the property, and the doors are a unique single-panel design that can be opened without an intrusive guide rail or large opener. Each door is made to a specific style, and although the holes through each door might make some consumers wary of this style, apparently the Brazilian’s don’t see any problems with it. According to one Brazilian commenter, thieves might examine a garage and see two normal cars inside, but the cultural standards of Brazilians mean that no valuable tools or equipment will be left out in plain view and thieves are usually discouraged by the heavy duty steel framing.

  • Garage Greatness: Building Your Own Nest

    How often do you adjust your home thermostat? Many thermostats are outdated eyesores, installed by contractors who are more interested in getting the lowest possible bid than they are in the comfort of their home’s future inhabitants. Also, most homeowners use their thermostat in an inefficient way, and since home temperature control accounts for as much as 10% of total energy usage in the US, even just slightly wasteful habits can mean hundreds of dollars of cost for each household – hundreds of millions, across the country. Tony Fadell is the man behind Nest, the smart thermostat that is designed to solve these problems, and he is more qualified than anyone to create cutting edge technology: before he was prototyping a thermostat in a Palo Alto garage, he was creating the iPod and iPhone at his previous executive position with Apple.

  • Garage Project: Hot Rod Fever!

    People use their garages for all kinds of things, but consistently we see two uses that stand out as the most common. Many people store things in the garage, and many (although perhaps fewer than you’d expert!) also keep their cars there. For some people, however, they can practice their hobby and keep their cars indoors at the same time. For anyone who collects hot rods or considers themselves a hobbyist mechanic, the thought of leaving their beautiful custom car outside, exposed to the elements, is unthinkable. The garage has always been home to tinkerers and auto experts, but some modern chop shops take this fascination to a whole new level.

  • Ring a Bell: Alexander Graham Bell Invents the Telephone

    Alexander Graham Bell lived from 1847 until 1922, and in those years he had a remarkable life of innovation and advocacy. He is best known for being the first person to patent a practical telephone, one of the greatest innovations to human communication of all time, but in his life Bell also addressed many other areas of interest to him, mostly regarding deafness and elocution. Bell’s legacy shaped human history and his inventions were critical to the continuing progress of technology, but what is commonly forgotten about his work is that he got his start in the garage – or, to be more accurate, the carriage house!

  • Doggie Day Care

    The summer may be coming to a close, but that doesn’t mean that the heat is going anywhere! All of us here at A Plus Garage Doors are huge animal fans, but we often can’t bring our pets with us when we leave the home. Most stores won’t allow pets of course, and with the temperature outside, leaving them in the car isn’t an option. Although there may be no easy solution to this problem in the Charlotte area, Dr. Mary Traverse from Austin, Texas, has found a way to let pet owners take their dogs with them on errands, without placing them at risk.

  • 3 More Garage Band Success Stories!

    There isn’t always an easy solution to a loud home. With children, television, and the rumbles or beeps that come with any appliance, finding peace and quiet in your home can be difficult. Many of these noises are unavoidable, but sometimes the secret is fairly simple. Loud hobbies or guitar practice are typically sent to the one room in the house where noises can be separated from the rest of your living space – the garage. This tradition, practiced by hobbyist woodworkers and middle-school bandmates alike has given rise to many of the greatest bands of all time. Last Monday, we looked at four chart toppers that begun playing together in the garage – The Who, Nirvana, Ramones, and The Kinks. Today, we’re going to continue the trend by talking about the origins of The Runaways, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and The Yardbirds. These three classic artists begun playing together in the garage, and from there successfully moved into performing packed amphitheaters around the world.

  • Your Home’s Secret Energy Cost!

    Can you imagine life without a garage door opener? Your parents or grandparents lived without them for years, of course, but the modern convenience of pulling up your driveway and seeing the door already opening is a welcome sight. The concept of having to park your car in front of the door, get out into the heat or rain, and manually lift the door isn’t just annoying, it is also a huge safety risk. Your garage door opener is responsible for holding the door closed until your specially coded remote opens it. What you probably don’t know about your opener is that it might be costing you hundreds of dollars a year.

  • Finding Treasure: Fisher Research Labs

    Who hasn’t fantasized about discovering a buried stash of old valuables, or uncovering a pirate’s treasure from the beach? Children and adults alike love to rediscover the past, and one of the most fun and potentially lucrative ways to do that comes with treasure hunting. Hobbyists and professionals who search through ruins, farmsteads and beaches for relics from another time capture the imagination of us all, and hearing about someone finding a lost wedding ring or handful of colonial-era coins makes you wish that you’d been the one searching your backyard! This desire is exactly the reason that led Dr. Gerhard Fisher to patent the metal detector and found Fisher Research Labs, an ongoing world leader in metal detectors. Fisher founded his company in 1931 in Palo Alto, California, inside the garage attached to his home.

  • How to Upgrade your Garage Door: Painting it!

    Is your garage door a white rectangle? Most doors are, and although there’s nothing wrong with a simple solution, some homes simply don’t look as good with a white door. Maybe your home’s exterior is better suited for a wooden door, or a door colored in a less traditional tone. Some homes can match the styling of their door’s glass windows to the styling of their entry door or nearby exterior windows. Some homeowners choose to make their door pop by painting it red, blue, green, or painting it with a bold pattern. Even just changing the hardware on your door’s exterior to emulate a carriage house door. Basically, if you’ve got an older door or a plain door, you might be missing out on one of the best ways to express your personality on the outside of your house!

  • The HP Garage

    The Hewlett-Packard Company, usually called HP, is one of the largest information technology companies in the world. They produce a variety of hardware components and software that are used all around the world. HP employs over 300,000 employees and earned more than 110 billion dollars of revenue in 2014. Needless to say, HP is a big deal in the world of electronics, but the company has one high honor that has nothing to do with their commercial success; the garage in which HP first operated has been named “the birthplace of Silicone Valley” and added it to the list of California Historical Landmarks. Hewlett-Packard started in a garage, and for over seventy-five years since then they have been one of the preeminent names in information technology.

  • 25 Ways to Childproof your Garage

    You might think of your garage as a messy storage room, but anyone who has ever had a child knows that kids see something very different. To a child, a garage is an enchanting land of forbidden toys, tasty liquids and fun machinery. Keeping kids out of the garage is the best way to protect them from it, but once your child gets to the age that they can open doors, you can’t be expected to watch them 24/7. We’ve collected 25 tips to child-proof your garage. Spending a couple hours making your garage a safer place for your son or daughter to play is well worth the time when you consider the risk of a child getting hurt, and most of these tips can be done on a small budget or no budget at all.

  • Dinosaur Door

    The garage door is typically thought of as one of the noisiest parts of your home, but that doesn’t have to be the case. Although many garage doors are poorly maintained and therefore end up being rather loud, if noise is a concern then there are a number of simple steps you can take to reduce the amount of noise that operating your door makes. Some of these steps might place you at risk, so we recommend only having an expert perform this maintenance, but some of the simpler steps can be safely performed by homeowners. If your garage door sounds like a dinosaur, like in the video attached, frankly that is awesome and we don’t suggest changing it. But if your door is a boring sort of loud, these simple steps can help reduce the noise and keep you sane.