Garage door widening problem

[trojan09]

Hi,

Garage door entrance being widened to accommodate wider vehicle but there is a problem;

1. existing brick surround having to be "cut back" by two bricks - to give the extra "width" into the garage.

2. I want the bricks cut back and then refaced/reinserted etc - so as to give a brick face on the front of the house and the side edge piece too [hope this is clear to readers - there is a side piece of 6-9inches from the front face of the house to the garage doors that "sit behind" the garage wall etc - sorry for my lousy description, its straight forward but the words fail me!].

2. problem is....brickies tell me that to do this job it will take 5 man days per garage - that's a lot of dollars!

question: does this seem a reasonable estimate?

brickies suggest I stick a wood panel down the side and so instead just cut off the bricks - a much quicker solution but may look cheap and nasty in comparison to my preferred solution.

any advice welcome

 

[Irfan2]

First make sure that you have enough overhang on the lintol above the garage door. If you remove a brick lenght from either side you probably wont have the min. 150mm support.

If you dont have a problem with this issue, then you can cut the brickwork back and form a new reveal.

As for the timber method, you have a maintenance issue (exposure to weather, painting etc) - its not pretty but as you said it will be cheap.

 

[^woody^]

Ignoring the supports, and any other work in widening the doors, purely for toothing out the bricks and putting in some new bricks to the pier then 1 day for each reveal is too generous if part of the other work.

I would say perhaps 4-6 hours per reveal?

Tell your builder he has either the slowest, or the greediest brickies in the world working for him. Or are they just lazy and unskilled?

Plant on strips and bits of wood (or PVCu) should only be used to beat the lazy builder with. They are an eyesore