I am working on converting an old concrete block 2 car garage to a workshop. The ceiling joists sag and there is a crack down the back wall. I want to raise the ceiling from 8 feet to ten feet for reasonable amount of room to work, and stud the walls for insulation in the wall. I want to install a sheetrock ceiling and insulate the attic. I want to remove the garage doors and fill in the openings with a wall in both with a personnel door in one. The decision point would be whether or not a new one would be cheaper than modifying the old one. I hired a structural engineer to evaluate the structure and produce plans for its complying with code and enabling this modification. He says that it can be modified and the walls raised to ten feet. The plans are due next week. In deciding how to raise the roof, discussions were held about disassembling the roof structure and reassembling it atop the raised walls. Another suggestion was to lift the entire roof assembly and raise the walls, and replace the roof structure. I talked to a contractor about lifting the roof, raising the walls, and reseating the roof structure in its entirety. He said that it can be done, after the structure is reinforced as the engineer will specify. It will be an interesting project.

I've lived in my current home for about a year. The relatively-antiquated (late 70's) garage door opens fine with either the car remotes or the wall switch, but in the last month or so has developed a problem in closing -- it only goes down about 1 feet when I use either the wall switch or car remote to close it. I have to pull it down about 1-2 feet and then the motor will close it the remainder of the way. We've been told by the local garage door company that the only fix for this is to replace the entire door. That sounds fishy to me, especially when teh cost of a new door and opener is about $1500. But I admit to knowing very little about door openers, and the prior owners of the home did not have any manuals on the opener. When our power was out recently, I had to use the manual disconnect to get the door open. It opened very easily by hand - in fact, almost too easily, I had to be careful or it would get to the top and then bounce back and forth -- and closed fairly easily by hand, although not as easily as it opened. Can anyone offer any thoughts? Any help will be greatly appreciated.