Cutting out an Access Door for our Garage Addition

Ever since we completed last year’s third stall garage addition, getting an access door put in has been in the back of my mind. Once you add power to your garage door you’re pretty much sunk in the case of a power outage if you need to get in… Not good news for us here as it isn’t unheard of during our rough winter months. Neither Lodi or I wanted to be out here in 30 degrees below zero making this hole WHEN WE NEED IT. No I would much rather do something like this, ya know, when its nice outside.

Lodi and I played with the idea of the access door being on an outside wall but we both liked the idea much better of opening up the wall between the garages instead.

One weekend this fall (when I was a rare solo act) I helped my dad put in a new pressure tank in his house. Then he asked me if there was anything he could help me with and this was the immediate project that popped into my mind.

Dad said, “Ok, I’ll be over tomorrow!”

So all my plans for that Sunday headed to another day and I plugged in my tool batteries to tackle this.

I knew this wasn’t going to be an enormous job but a job is still a job and anytime I’m at the top of a ladder cutting anything with a reciprocating saw I get a little nervous.

(Besides that I really am very rusty and rather spoiled as Lodi does a lot of the heavy lifting around here now.)

So Dad coming by to spot me was very appreciated.

I made the decision immediately to make this as easy as possible: just locating the studs and literally making the doorway that wide (four feet).

First I cut off the bubble wrap insulation, black plastic barrier and then pulled out all of the fiberglass insulation. (I bagged it all up and we used all of it either here or elsewhere later.)

From there Dad taught me a trick I never knew was even possible.

Did you guys know you can cut vinyl siding with just a utility knife?

I never would have even considered it thinking the siding was WAY too thick for that but no, he was right. First I drilled holes from the original garage at each top corner of our new doorway. Then we went to the other side and used the siding as a straight edge to cut it out down either side and across the top with a utility knife.

I killed a couple of birds with one stone with this access door. (My gosh that is such a weird expression.)

When we had the slab poured for our garage addition the concrete truck snagged the side of our original garage and broke the siding in one spot. Fortunately this spot was also the ideal place for our access door so we didn’t have to fix the siding at all.

With the siding cut Dad and I pounded it out and pulled it off of the furring strips.

From there it was just me with my reciprocating saw getting the whole doorway cut out. Yes we did take out one stud in the center but with the extra support we added to this wall for the garage addition it literally matters not.

At this point we actually called it the end of our day as a few sentences to type was actually quite a few hours of work! And all of the heavy lifting for the access door was done!

It wasn’t pretty but I cleaned it all up and it was ready to be framed in and trimmed out.

Originally we were considering putting an actual door on this but once it was opened up that just seemed silly. We couldn’t think of any good reason to add a door to this.

So all that was left was the framing and making it a bit prettier.

Lodi tackled the finishing of the access door one day when he happened to get off work early. He framed it out with 2x6s then covered the entire thing with the bubble wrap insulation.

We love it!

It actually turned out a lot better than I had expected – it totally feels like it belongs here and really made the addition feel more open and airy.