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Posted by David Combs on July 4, 2008, 8:27 pm
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>> Any tricks you can suggest? (Otherwide it's a real bitch -- many hours).
>
>David, I have just such a style 'porch' though my house may not be as old.
>It's got your basic 'stud' like risers over what in my case is about a 30
>inch 'wall' and screen above that to the ceiling. We have to rescreen it
>every so often (pets, then the renters when we were gone a few years).
>
>We use thin 'slat' wood (its about what you'd use to lay carpet along a
>cement slab floor or shim a doorframe). Call it 1/3 inch thick? It's a
>little hard to find long pieces so sometimes we've used 'pretty molding' of
>the small thin sort.
>
>Take down the old 'slat wood' or 'pretty molding' (almost impossible to save
>it) then place the screen over the opening between the pillars (which are
>hopefully flat! If not, you'll see another way below for round ones) then
>cut it a bit longer than you need and fold the edges under 2 or 3 times.
>Use a staple gun and hang it up. Next, cover the stapled edges with the
>slat wood (pretty molding, whatever). If you get it thin enough, you can
>use the staple gun to put up the slat wood.
>
>If they are round poles, find corner molding that fits fairly neatly to the
>dimensions of your poles and use that instead.
>
>In both cases, it's a little easier if you paint or stain the slat wood to
>match the existing porch wood fairly closely before you cut it and put it
>up. Later then, you need only do a touch up and perhaps a little caulk at
>where the corners meet top and bottom. Then again if you plan to paint the
>porch after, you can wait but I find it easier to paint with no screens to
>have to worry about, then paint the slats, then put it all up, and touch up
>after.
>
>This last time? We took all the old screen (most was badly damaged or
>missing) from the 44ft long screened porch off the back of the house,
>painted the 'pretty molding', stapled the screen up, then put the molding
>up. Oddly the porch itself didnt need painting except later we need to do
>the ceiling.
>
>Don and I did the 44ft porch in about 3 hours, not counting the time to cut
>and prepaint the pretty molding in a contrasting color to the wood studs,
>but counting the time to dab paint to cover the staples.
>
>There are 14 'window screen areas' along that porch. 56 portions of molding
>to cut with all but a few of the same size (the corner section needed
>shorter top and bottom pieces). We did those assembly style the day before.
>
>Not sure if you want hints on how to make that part go fast, but harmless to
>add it if you do need it.
>
>---
>Cutting the 'pretty molding or slat wood'. It really helps if you have a
>child at least age 8 who can handle a basic tape measure accurately.
>Charlotte is 14 and this is easy for her. While Don got the saw ready (fast
>easy cutting didnt need the high power tool but what the heck, we love our
>toys!), Charlotte and I laid a big piece of plastic out in the yard. The
>sort folks use to help winterize windows and comes in 10foot rolls, we used
>a 20ft long swatch 9 feet or so wide.
>
>Once the plastic was laid out,
You're laying out the plastic to the exact size of one of those 14 windows,
and then using it as a template or jig for the other 13?
Question: how many mills thick is the sheeting? 2? 4?
To insure that it doesn't stretch, doesn't blow away with the slightest
leaf-rustling weak-breeze?
Do you pin it to the ground, perhaps, to keep it rectangular?
> Charlotte got her markers while i laid out
>all the pieces of wood 'ugly side up'. Before I was done, she had marked
>most that fit on the plastic 'tarp' we'd made up and I was carting that to
>Don who was cutting faster than we could mark.
>
>Charlotte first marked off all the long tall pieces and Don cut those. The
>remaining piece was longer than we needed for one bottom or top but not
>quite enough for a bottom and a top. The long pieces once cut we stacked to
>the side as the top and bottoms were marked then cut out. I believe it was
>8 pieces of molding that were used just to make the extra top/bottom pieces.
>Yeah, lots of little 12-14 inch bits left over.
>
>Time spent on this: about 45 mins. Keep in mind you probably do not have
>to deal with 56 portions but may not have help of 2 others.
>
>Next stage, lay it all out and start painting. With it being in the yard on
>the grass it's kinda lumpy but you cant mess up the driveway and any paint
>you 'spill' will go away when you cut the grass ;-). Wear messy clothes and
>dont worry, just paint fast. Drips not relevant unless extreme and on the
>actual wood. Takes about 2 mins per 'slat' so in our case 112 mins divided
>by 3 so 'gee a little over 30 mins'. It actually took a little longer as we
>decided to decorate one another ;-)
>
>-----
>Total time, about 5 hours. Use of child labor, only for the fun parts and 2
>hours. Use of second person on day to hang it, minimal but did make it go
>faster to have another to hold the parts up while staple-gunning it in
>place.
After or before doing the slats/pretty-moldings, you staple-in all 14
screen-spaces.
What difficulty did you have in getting a window's screen stretched
tight enough to not experience a wave-action when there's a breeze?
As I recall from here, getting it evenly stretched and holding it
that way while stapling it -- didn't end up being a whole lot
of fun!
What ideas for getting that done?
And once that's done, the slats/molding cover them up (and by providing
pressure along the entire length, relieves the staples of some of their
"hold screen tight" atasks).
(In fact (is it true that?) the job of the staples is to hold the
screen (somewhat) taught *until* the slats get nailed down tight?)
>Helps?
For sure!
David
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