Tell people you’re going to install your own garage door and it’s like you’ve announced plans to ride a bicycle across a tightrope above some city street. Just like automobile coil springs, garage-door springs inspire fear and loathing even in people of considerable handiness. Happily, it doesn’t have to be that way anymore. The old style of springs still exist, but they’ve been joined by a lot of safety equipment that make installing and keeping them around a far safer proposition.

My house here in Vermont was built around 1970 and originally included a two-car garage. Sometime before we purchased it, however, the garage door and its jambs had been removed and replaced with a wall containing four windows and an entry door. A lot of demolition later and an oddly sized den that we never used had been converted back into a garage space—sans overhead door.

I looked at a lot of options, including hiring a contractor. I nearly went through with hiring, but the contractor’s chief installer was maimed by an old-style spring — setting all the timetables back indefinitely while he recovered. Since I already had the door in my garage (ordered through the local big-box store and delivered by the contractor I almost hired), and I wanted the place set up by the time autumn weather rolled around, I decided to go ahead myself.

Thankfully I had splurged the extra few dollars for the DIY-friendly torsion-spring winders. Mine are Clopay EZ-SET, because that’s what the big-box store offered, but torsion-spring winding systems are also offered by several other manufacturers of garage-door hardware. The EZ-SET system is also used by Ideal and Holmes; Wayne Dalton uses a system called Torque Master; Arrow Tru-Line offers its S3 series of winders; Spring King’s line is called Simple Set; and Overhead Door offers its Armortite system which includes not only a winder, but a protective steel tube for the spring.

Follow the installation process here.