Two kinds of damp
False Bay doors deal with moisture from two directions. On the seafront in Muizenberg, St James and Fish Hoek, it is the same salt air as the Atlantic side, and it does the same things — corroded motor boards, rusted cables, bottom panels going from the edge up. Behind the Main Road, on the mountain-side streets of Kalk Bay and up the slopes of Lakeside, it is damp: garages cut into the mountain that never fully dry, timber doors that swell and stick in winter, and steel hardware that rusts at the fixings.
The repairs follow. A motor repair on the seafront is often a board; on the mountain side it is often a seized roller or a track rusted at its bracket. Timber tip-ups on the old cottages swell, bind, and are planed and refinished rather than replaced, until the rot reaches the frame.
The cottages, the slopes and the narrow lanes
Kalk Bay and St James are old fishing-village streets: narrow, steep, and lined with cottages whose garages were added later into whatever space there was. Low headroom, odd-sized openings and no room to swing a tip-up are the rule, and a roll-up that coils into a barrel is usually the only door that fits. Where a timber door is part of a cottage's character, it is kept and automated in place where the frame is sound, and replaced like-for-like where it is not.
Further south, Simon's Town has the naval-village houses with the same constraints, and Kommetjie, Scarborough and Noordhoek on the far side are big stands, long driveways, exposed to the south-wester, and a real drive from anywhere. The arrival window there reflects the road honestly.
Holiday houses, and doors nobody has opened since April
A lot of False Bay is holiday property, and a garage door that has stood closed through a wet winter is a door that will not open in December: the springs have set, the rollers have rusted in their tracks, the receiver's batteries are flat and the motor has forgotten its remotes. The December-week call from a Muizenberg holiday let is a service visit that should have happened in October, and it is quicker and cheaper as one. A spring on a door that has been standing is checked before the motor is asked to lift it.
The whole bay is worked from the same routes, and the vans carry the stainless hardware and the small-opening roll-up kits the village streets keep asking for.