Paul Petralia and his wife Donna show off their warehouse to David O. Martin, during a recent visit to the Bay Area Overhead Doors facility.

In business since 1989, Petralia admits he is fastidious about the ways things are done.

“I've got to make sure that things are done the way I'd want them done, if I were the customer,” Petralia said.

His wife, Donna, said Paul never makes a promise he can't keep. She said the company actually promises low and delivers high.

Because he places such an emphasis on integrity and quality, Petralia finds referrals come naturally for his business.

“We're straight up front from the beginning. I get a lot of friends who refer people,” Paul said. He said he tries to avoid making decisions for people, by providing as much information as he can to facilitate customer choice.

“Sometimes people want you to sell them X door and X opener. We don't like to do it that way,” Paul said.

Petralia has seen the garage business from almost every angle. His grandfather was a garage door installer in the Bay Area in the 50s and Paul worked for the company that purchased his grandfather's firm helping to build and install one-piece garage doors. He went from being a shop guy to shop foreman to manager of the business.

“We would build and install between eight and 10 one-piece doors in a day and from 40 to 60 a week,” Petralia said. He said he worked for different owners of the garage door company for 10-12 years, until he said it was time to “strike out” on his own.

Starting from scratch, Paul and his wife have built the business. They employ six full-time installers, a full-time estimator, a full-time service person and one combined sales/service person. They became linked to Martin Doors in 1997.

Located just blocks from the San Jose Airport, Petralia said he has seen trends in the Bay area go from wood to steel sectional doors with a slow migration coming back to wood doors again. His company recently installed a Martin wood door as part of Home & Garden Television's “Curb Appeal.”

San Jose is now the 10 th largest city in the U.S. (San Francisco is 13 th ) and Petralia said competition is much more intense than it was when he first started in the door business.

Bay Area Overhead Doors covers the entire Bay area from Santa Cruz to San Francisco and up into Oakland, according to Donna Petralia.