Aluminum garage doors are the cheapest garage doors money can buy. They are lightweight, easy to lift and lower manually, and the easiest to repair. If you recently (and accidentally!) smacked into your closed aluminum garage door, do not worry. It can take a hit, and you can hit it back into shape. Here is why you can do that, and how you can repair this problem on your own.
Aluminum Bends
Pop cans are made of aluminum, and they crush just as easily. If you wanted to put the pop cans back into their original shape, you could. The same holds true for aluminum garage doors. When your car dented the garage door, it was just like crushing a pop can. It bent easily under the force of your car. You can restore the garage door just as easily as you bent it.
Hitting the Door Back into Shape
The ideal thing here would be to put your car in the garage with the fender that created the dent facing forward against the dent. Then, with a little force, that same fender that created the dent could help force it back out. Unfortunately, you probably cannot get the door open because of the dent, and it would be very difficult to put the car in in the reverse direction with the existing dent taking up space on the opposite side of the door.
Your best recourse here is to take a rubber-headed sledgehammer and smack the dent out, working from the middle of the inverted dent inside the garage outward towards the edges of the dent. You do not have to swing very hard; remember, the goal of this repair is to push the dent out, not utterly destroy the door. Once most of the dent appears to have been pushed outward, go around to the front of the garage door and take a look. You may have several creases where the dent left its mark, but it should look fairly even and flat again.
Test the Door after You Have Hammered the Dent Out
The best way to make sure you have done an adequate job with your damaged aluminum garage door is to roll it up and open. If it rolls open now and does not stick, congratulations! It is a job well done. If it still seems to have a few problems but you do not want to hammer it any further, consult a garage door repair company like AAA Garage Door, Inc. to see what else you can do to make the former dent smoother.
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