I am always on the lookout for new products that will excite our customers and help people to realise that a garage door doesn’t have to be just a boring functional thing. In reality garage doors can be an integral part of the architecture of a building and a major contributor to the design. It is difficult to say whether there are just so many same old, same old designs on the market because it is what people want or because that is all they think is available. One company that challenges this mindset is Belgian manufacturer L-Door.
L-Door is a sectional door manufacturer and 5 years ago they set up their Cre8tive department. What they do there is quite unique. They take their sectional doors and clad them with an array of various materials specific to the client requirements. This may be timber façade doors in the case of Nature Line STL. It can be panel cladding from major manufacturers such as Trespa or Rockpanel, or glass, in the case of Puma Line STX. My personnel favourite is the Puma Line STL which is clad with Renson blades, this door is simply stunning and challenges all traditional ideas of how a garage door should look. See for yourself in the video below.
[blockquote]Just over-cladding a sectional door though is nothing new, what makes L-Door so special is they design and deliver the whole façade system[/blockquote]Just over-cladding a sectional door is nothing new. What makes L-Door so special is that they design and deliver the whole façade system. This can include not just the garage door and fixed panels but also windows and entrance doors. Façade doors from other manufactures are usually designed to be clad onsite. Whilst this can work, and is undoubtedly a cheaper option, often errors are made. When order a façade system from L-Door for you, everything is planned and calculated down to the last millimetre. What this means for you, as the client, is that when we come to site we are assembling and installing. Not manufacturing. This significantly improves the quality of the finished job and the time we require on-site.
A trip to see the façade doors in the flesh
Before we take on a new product I always like to visit the manufacturing facility myself. Seeing the doors on the factory floor you really get a feel for the engineering and quality control of a product product. True to the Belgian stereotype the quality and the care that goes into the L-Door product is top notch. Even before it gets to the manufacturing stage, they ensure that the whole install has been designed, 3D rendered and scrutinised, by a dedicated team. I am trying not to sound too gushing here but, the care that is taken to make sure every Cre8tive order is right from the start is another step up from most manufacturers.
We are the first UK supplier of L-Door façade doors and are delighted to be so. L-Door doors give us something unique to offer our customers with the opportunity to enhance the design of their property.
If you’d like to know more about L-Door façade doors then just contact us. We would be delighted to work with you on your special project.
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We have installed a Garador Gararoll which is an insulated roller quite different the the other roller doors we have in the showroom. Firstly the Gararoll has completely smooth slats where as other doors have 2 embossed ribs through each slat, this give the Gararoll a much more contemporary appearance than other roller garage doors. The other main difference is that the Gararoll is counterbalanced so that in the event of a power failure no winding handle is required the door can simply be released from the operator and lifted manually. This also makes the Gararoll a great option as a manual door where as other manual roller doors can be clunky and awkward.
The other new addition to the garage door showroom is our Garador Linear Medium sectional garage door. The door has a smooth surface finish and has been painted Ruby Red. As we didn’t have any manual sectional doors in the showroom we had this one fitted with locking and a stainless steel handle for customers to try. We will soon be installing a matching Garador FGS 700 front door next to the Linear Medium so watch this space!
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When I’d come back from making the tea this morning, I wanted to have a look at the floor we’d painted yesterday, unfortunately, it was worse than it was when we’d left. When I asked James what I should do today, he gave me a camera and told me to take pictures of the staff doing their jobs.
First of all, I took some pictures of Hayley while she was on the phone and looking at her laptop – she looks very professional! I then went outside and took some snap-shots of the boys who were unloading, and loading up the van before they began their repairs.
When I was happy with my pictures, I was asked to create a Gliderol (another brand of garage door supplier) price list for Jerry at our garage doors wirral office. This was a document which required me to learn a lot of new skills – as I wasn’t very good at all at using Microsoft Excel before today! This took quite a long time but when I looked back on it with James, I must say, I felt quite proud as he confirmed that I had made no mistakes! The only thing that had forgotten was that I needed to add in a key to make it easier to read!
I’ve had a really interesting week this week and I’ve learnt so many new practical skills!
Thank you Lakes!
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Tea.
I began my duties today by shredding yesterday’s letters and folding the freshly printed, correctly dated ones up into the required envelope sizes.
When I had finished this, Hayley and I went out into the Lakes Garage Doors Garstang showroom to do a bit more scraping to the paint as James had gone to pick the paint up from the store. We were taking it in turns to scrape, sweep and mop the floor. The reason we were mopping was because when the floor was damp, it made the old paint a whole lot easier to scrape off!
When James arrived, he mixed the paint and the hardener in a bucket so that it would be easier for us to move around as we painted. While he did this, I went to the back room to grab the frame for the roller.
Dilemma 1) The roller was a LOT wider than the frame and unfortunately we didn’t have a spare of either!
As a result of this, James sent Hayley back to the paint shop to get a new roller supply. While she was gone, James and I painted around the garage door showroom floors so that the edges were neat and tidy.
When Hayley got back, we were pleased to see that Hayley had not only got 4 spare rollers, but also that she had bought back 2 rollers that came with frames! So we immediately got started.
Dilemma 2) After about 30 seconds of rolling the paint, both mine, and James’ roller’s had come off the frame. we tried to push them back on, and they did go back on, but the same problem occurred every time we repaired them.
James then went into the stock room at the back of the showroom to double check if we had any better rollers. He came back with a big smile on his face carrying a much wider, much fatter roller that perfectly fitted into the original frame. So while he painted the floor rapidly, I carried on much slower with the roller that came off the frame pathetically regularly!
Dilemma 3) James and I painted a 3rd of the garage door showroom floor before we took a step back to view our work. We were horrified to see that the new paint was making more of the old paint rise and flake off! Infuriated and frustrated, James went to get Hayley and ask for advice. She stated ”From an artistic point of view, I think the colour of this floor paint would’ve clashed with the door at the end anyway…” James immediately sent her away.
We decided that we would see how it looked in the morning and decide what to do from there.
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Today, again, first of all I was asked to make everyone at Lakes Garage Doors Garstang tea. I think this is becoming obvious! The account manager went away on Holiday this morning so I am going to be covering on her duties for the rest of the week.
When everyone had got started, my office manager, other wise known as Hayley, my big sister, came over and showed me how to create a mail merge. I was asked to do this so that people’s names and addresses didn’t have to be typed out at the top of every letter. I was a bit confused at first as it seemed too simple for such a complex looking spreadsheet, but none the less, I got it completed in approximately 1 hour and a half.
Once my spreadsheet was all typed up and ready to be transferred onto letters, Hayley sent them to be printed for me. While we waited for them to print – sounds like a quick process, but there were 150! – Hayley gave me leaflets to put into the envelopes. They didn’t fit in, so each and everyone had to be folded to suit the envelope size.
When the letters had all printed out, I began folding and placing into the envelopes. Unfortunately, when I was finally on my last 4 or 5 letters, I realised something extremely relevant… ”Hayley, have you deliberately set the date to the 3rd of February?”
Of corse, I’m going to have to repeate this job in the morning!
]]>When we got there after the hour and a half journey to garage doors Wirral, I was introduced to 3 men, Jerry, Frank and Arron. Arron is from Seceuroglide Lakes roller garage door supplier and Frank is Jerry’s assistant. As James and I walked into Jerry’s office, we were followed by Frank who was offering us tea and foxed biscuits.. Yes it was only 10am, but I just couldn’t resist!
Before the meeting started, Jerry and Frank were really making me and James giggle! They were so jolly and silly and so far from being serious! Being around so laughter was a really good start to the day!
During this meeting I took a page full of notes – half of which were probably irrelevant.. the other half of which were doodles of penguins and snails, but I was praised none the less!
When it was time to leave, James and I went to Blackpool to attend a site visit for a sectional garage door. This house was absolutely huge and had a lot of adapting being done – Not only were we there to get measurements for a new door to fix, but the home owner also had lots of builders helping with other aspects – and this was just outdoors!
It was really nice to have been out all day today, as yesterday I was very busy in the showroom!
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Hello!
My name is Adie White, and this week has been extremely eventful for me!
I live in a town called Hemel Hempstead, just out of London, but this week I have been staying in a modern flat with my sister and her boyfriend in Lancaster which is a 3 hour train journey from my local station!
The reason for this madness is because this week I have been doing my work experience! I have been doing such a massive range of jobs and activities, like; making tea, going out in the Lakes van to help with site visits, and even preparing the huge door showroom for a photo shoot!
Day 1:
It was my first day of working at Lakes Garage Doors today, and I must say, I am KNACKERED! The first job I was requested to do was to make tea for the 6 workers before we they got started on their duties – Easy enough…
Second of all, I was told what I would be doing for the rest of the week and it all sounded pretty exciting! My boss – James – told me that the company needed their web-page to be updated at that they wanted photographs of all the workers doing their jobs. He told me that before the pictures were taken, they wanted the garage doors garstang showroom to be done up, repainted and decorated with lovely little trees so that it would look all nice and tidy in for the customer’s first impressions.
Now, as I am a commited art student and have a serious passion for photography, the idea of this really excited me!
When James and I went off in the Lakes van to pick up the paint, we were told not only that they would have to order the paint for us to pick up in about 3 days, but also that if we wanted the paint to set properly, we would have to scrape up all of the existing paint from the floor!
James then stated to me ”That will keep you occupied for the rest of the day then!” My initial thought on this was ‘Ah cool! A scraping machine!’ little did I know that when we got back to the work place, I would be handed a heavy metal pole, taller than me by half my height.. with a blade on the end of it.
James was right, I was definately occupied for the rest of the day!
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