Jerry knew we needed to get his electric bill down and he knew he needed to do it now. He had already done most of the obvious things that he could think of. He’d blown insulation into his attic spaces, he sealed up his fireplace completely and he had switched to all compact fluorescent lamps. But somehow he knew he could do more. He just didn’t know what.
But he did figure it out. On that fateful day he was in his garage changing the oil in his wife’s Caprice station wagon. It was a gigantic throat lozenge shaped monster. A full 21 feet long and 8 feet wide. A hulking behemoth that barely fit into their two-car garage. He hated it.
And now here he was changing the oil filter on his nemesis on a frigid Saturday morning. He placed the old filter on the garage floor next to him. Why, he thought, Oh why isn’t this garage warmer? I got a space heater in here! And then it struck him;
The door. Yes, the garage door. It was a simple sheet of metal, nowhere near substantial enough to keep the arctic winds of Houston Texas from freezing his poor tired bones. Now, finally, he knew what he had to do.
He had to insulate his garage door.
He took careful measurements of his garage door panels, and with his hands shivering in the brutal 52° winter air he checked the weatherstripping on either side and the bottom of the door. He had what he needed.
He made his way down to Lowes and carefully selected a shopping cart with a squeaky wheel. He moved from one aisle to the next gathering foil backed foam insulation panels, adhesive, weatherstripping and threshold molding. He would need it all, and he would use it all for this: his Garage Door Insulation Project!
Arriving back at home he checked his outdoor thermometer — 49°. My God, the temperature was actually dropping as the hour approached noon. He knew he would have to work fast if he were going to survive long enough to finish the job.
He measured and cut the panels and installed them on the inside of his garage doors, careful that the foil backing was on the proper side. Then came the weatherstripping – a particularly fetching shade of gray that he picked not just for its complementary color but for the silky soft texture of its horsehair edges. He finished by installing the new threshold and the rubber insulating strip on the bottom of the garage doors. And just in time too — for as he straightened up from tightening the last bolt his wife came into the garage from the kitchen.
“Well you’re all done I see,” she exclaimed, “did you have any trouble?”
“No, of course not. Just another morning at work for the king of the suburbs.”
“Well I’m going over to Jill’s to play hearts with the girls. Thanks honey, I’ll be back in time to cook dinner.”
He watched her drive away, a little surprised. She usually didn’t thank him when he completed his little projects around the house, but maybe she also understood just how important it was to properly insulate your garage door.
With a satisfied nod of his head, he turned to head back into the warmth of his home…
And stopped and stared at the new oil filter sitting on his workbench.
She would be back.
photo credit: Tab59Related posts: