Garage Door Repair in Thornhill

Thornhill is split down Yonge Street between Vaughan and Markham, and its garages are split by age just as sharply. South of Centre Street and around the old village, many homes date from the 1960s and 1970s. North of Rutherford, Thornhill Woods is mostly 2000s construction. The doors, and what breaks on them, follow those lines.

Older Thornhill: single garages and original hardware

In the older parts of Thornhill, on both sides of Yonge, you still find single-car garages, wood doors that have been painted many times, and extension springs running along the horizontal tracks rather than a torsion spring above the door. Extension springs are not dangerous in themselves, but on older installations the safety cable that runs through the middle of each spring is often missing. When one of those springs breaks without a cable, it can fly across the garage.

If you have a door like this, it is worth looking up at the springs. If there is no cable threaded through them, that is a cheap fix that should not wait for the spring to fail.

Wood doors: repair or replace?

Old wood doors are heavy, and they get heavier as they soak up water and layers of paint. That puts extra strain on springs and openers, and rot at the bottom section lets in water and mice. A sound wood door can be kept going. One with soft wood along the bottom, split panels and hardware pulling out of the stiles usually costs more to keep alive than it is worth. We explain how we decide in repair or replace.

Thornhill Woods and newer streets

Homes built from the late 1990s onward mostly have double steel doors with torsion springs and belt- or chain-drive openers. Twenty years on, many of these are on their first spring failure and their first or second opener. The typical calls are a door that will not lift because a spring has broken, a door that reverses before it closes, which is usually the safety sensors, and a door that has gone noisy because the rollers and hinges are worn.

If your door reverses or refuses to close, check our guide to garage door sensors first. It is often a five-minute fix you can do yourself.

What we do in Thornhill

• Spring replacement, torsion and extension, including adding missing safety cables.

• Cable, roller, hinge and bearing replacement.

• Opener repair and new openers, including quieter belt drives for garages under a bedroom.

• Off-track doors and track realignment.

• New garage doors, single and double, and new front entry doors.

Getting a quote

Text us a photo of the door from outside and one from inside showing the springs and opener. For repairs that usually tells us exactly what is wrong. For a new door it tells us the size, the opening and what can be reused. We do not quote a price over the phone without seeing the door, because anyone who does is guessing. This is what actually decides the cost.

Serving Thornhill and the GTA

Modern Empire Doors is based in Richmond Hill, just north of Thornhill, and has served the GTA since 2018, 24 hours a day. We work on both sides of Yonge, and across Vaughan, Markham, Richmond Hill and North York.

Our replacement doors are made in Canada and carry a lifetime warranty. Call or text 647-323-1826.