A small shop, and that is the whole advantage

Most people never think about the garage door until the morning it will not open. By then it is the largest moving object in the house and it is between you and getting to work.

We started Garage & Gate Palace because that moment usually goes badly for the homeowner. You call whoever appears first, someone arrives, and within ten minutes you are being told you need a whole new door by a person who has not explained what actually failed. You cannot tell whether that is true. Most people pay it.

So we built the shop around the opposite habit. We look at the whole door, we tell you what broke and why, and we give you the number before we start. When the smaller repair is the right answer, we say so, including when the bigger job would have paid us more.

What we believe about garage doors

The door is a safety system, not an appliance. A typical double door runs 150 to 350 pounds, and a wood one can pass 400. Springs carry that weight. The opener only guides it. Every part of the job we do comes back to keeping that weight under control.

Age is a bad reason to replace anything. A 20 year old steel door with sound panels can take new springs, rollers, cables, and seal and run like new. A 15 year old opener with a working motor, an intact gear, and live safety sensors is worth a small part rather than a replacement. We replace things when they are finished, not when they are old.

You should be told what failed. Not shown a part in a bag. Told what it does, why it went, and what makes it go again. If we cannot explain a repair in plain language, we have not understood it well enough to charge you for it.

What we will not do

• Quote a number over the phone and change it in your driveway.
• Sell you a full door when one panel failed.
• Start work before you have seen the estimate.
• Turn up the opener force to hide a balance problem, because that defeats the system that stops a closing door on whatever is underneath it.
• Hand you the winding bars so you can adjust a torsion spring yourself. Those bars store enough energy to break an arm, and every experienced technician knows someone it happened to. Ask us anything about how the system works. We will not help you do that one.

Why "Palace"

A garage door is the biggest thing on the front of most houses. It is the first thing anyone sees and the last thing anyone maintains. Treat it like the front door it actually is and the whole house looks after itself better.

Where we work

San Diego and the surrounding area, 6 AM to 10 PM, seven days a week. Early mornings, evenings, and weekends run at the same rate as a Tuesday afternoon.

Not sure whether you are in range? Call or text with your cross streets and we will tell you straight away rather than sending someone out and charging for the drive.