A Reclaimed Wood Garage Door, Built to Weather the Coast

Salvaged fir planks, a brick-recessed opening, and a Sommer operator quiet enough to disappear. Here’s how this one came together.

Location Newport Beach, CADoor Custom reclaimed wood, 4-panelOpener Sommer belt-drive

Some garages are afterthoughts. This one was never going to be treated that way — it sits at the front of a new-construction home just blocks from the water, framed in a hand-laid brick surround that was clearly designed around the door, not the other way around.

The homeowners wanted the texture of old wood without the guesswork of reclaiming it themselves: real grain, real knots, a finish that already looks like it’s been through a few decades of salt air. So we built a custom four-panel door from reclaimed planks, hung it in the brick-clad recess, and paired it with a Sommer operator quiet enough to belong in a home where the garage sits directly under living space. The Door

Wood First, Hardware Second

Every plank on this door came from reclaimed stock, run horizontally across four panels so the grain, the weathering, and the odd nail hole all read as one continuous surface rather than four separate slabs bolted together. That’s harder to pull off than it sounds — the boards have to be sorted and matched before a single screw goes in, or the seams between panels turn into visible breaks in the pattern.

The brick surround does a lot of the work here too. It’s laid tight around the opening with almost no reveal, which means the door reads less like a garage door and more like a piece of the building’s original facade — the kind of detail that only works if the rough opening was framed dead-on in the first place. Behind the Panels

What’s Actually Holding It Up

Underneath that reclaimed face is a standard insulated door section, reinforced and hung on a heavy-duty torsion spring system rated for the extra weight solid wood carries over a typical steel door. Reclaimed lumber isn’t light, and a garage door lives on a spring-and-cable system doing hundreds of cycles a year — so the torsion springs, drums, and track were all sized up front for the actual weight of this door, not a standard-door assumption.

A wood door only looks effortless from the outside. Inside, everything — springs, track, the opener itself — has to be built for a heavier door doing the same job a steel one does every day. The Opener

Why Sommer, Specifically

This garage sits directly beneath living space, which is common on these narrow coastal lots — and it’s exactly the situation where a loud chain-drive opener becomes a daily annoyance. We installed a Sommer belt-drive operator, which runs on a reinforced fiberglass belt instead of a chain, so there’s no metal-on-metal noise traveling up through the framing.

Sommer belt-drive operator, mounted and running the panel through its first cycles. Rail and carriage aligned ahead of the final opener hookup.

Opener Specs

Sommer Belt-Drive Operator

Drive typeBelt (fiberglass-reinforced), quiet operation
LightingIntegrated LED work light
ControlSmartphone / app-based, no hub required
Best forGarages under or near living space
SafetyAuto-reverse obstruction sensing

It’s also smartphone-controllable, which matters more than it sounds like it should — for a second home or a rental near the beach, being able to check the door status or let someone in remotely is often the feature homeowners end up using the most. Finished

Set In, Not Bolted On

The last step is always the same test: does the door look like it was designed alongside the house, or does it look like it was added to it? Set flush inside the brick opening, with the plank lines running level across all four panels, this one reads as part of the original elevation — which was the point from the start.

Cityscape Garage Doors

Planning a custom install of your own?

Whether it’s reclaimed wood, a quiet belt-drive opener, or both, we handle the sizing, hardware, and install from rough opening to final cycle test — across Newport Beach and the surrounding coast.

Request a Quote See More Installs

Cityscape Garage Doors · Serving Newport Beach & Orange County