Chuck Walstead (front) with his father, Charles Walstead, have installed top-notch garage doors for decades at Orange County Overhead Door. Services include sectional garage doors and high-end, wooden garage doors.

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Orange County Overhead Door

At Orange County Overhead Door in Orange, the family business has evolved much like the garage doors they install and service. While owner, Chuck Walstead, originally worked for his father, now his dad works for him.

“My father, Charles Walstead, opened the business in 1963. In 1981, I started working for him and eventually graduated to installer.”

In 1989, when the recession hit, Charles walked away from the business, but by 1991, Chuck had started his own garage door company. His father came to work as the lead carpenter.

A full-service garage door company for residential and commercial clients, Orange County Overhead Door also handles automatic gate systems. Over the years, they’ve grown with the changes in the industry.

It used to be that garage doors were all standard single panel doors that swung up. In the mid-1980s, sectional garage doors that slide up and overhead hit the scene. Originally, there were only wood sectional doors, but then things really took off when they introduced nearly maintenance-free metal sectional doors featuring a wood-grain look.

Then in the mid-1990s, Orange County Overhead Door began getting requests from custom home builders for high-end wooden garage doors.

“The custom home builders wanted to match high-end wooden front doors with garage doors to create a cohesive front-of-the-home look,” says Chuck. “We started building custom wood doors in our shop, which we did for years. Now we have a manufacturer that creates beautiful custom doors for us to install.”

The garage door industry got another boost when they became much safer. Throughout the 1980s, sectional garage doors didn’t retract if they hit something in their path. Sensors installed in the 1990s changed that.

“Today’s garage doors are so sensitive that if they’re about to hit a paper towel, they’ll reverse,” says Chuck.

Orange County Overhead Door has nine employees, including Chuck, Charles and Sheila Walstead, Chuck’s wife, who is the CFO and oversees the business end of the company. Chuck and Sheila’s children, Soleil and Levi, have also worked for the company for years, learning valuable business knowledge from the ground up.

“I’m grateful for our solid crew,” says Chuck, who notes that they have employees dedicated to residential and commercial projects, the latter of which includes apartment and condominium communities.

Lori Miller is property manager and leasing associate for the Martin Commercial Group in Santa Ana, which has properties throughout Southern California.

“Orange County Overhead Door is topnotch and really reliable,” says Miller. “The customer service is excellent, the response time quick and the pricing fair. If we ever have an emergency like a stuck garage door, they solve the problem quickly, even if it’s during off hours.”

Orange County Overhead Door
2440 North Glassell St, Suite D, Orange CA 92865  /  714-998-9070.