Use Magic Mesh To Screen-in A Porch
The Mother of Invention
Recently, I was called upon to “screen-in” a porch. I always assume my customers want to save money, so I always look for inexpensive ways to help them fulfill their dream ideas.
I knew it would take a lot of labor and material to sufficiently frame in to be able to install conventional fiberglass sreening and build 2 screen doors.
That night, I saw an ad on TV for “Magic Mesh” and spent the night dreaming of how it might be used in place of regular screening etc.
A Novel Use For Magic Mesh
Here’s what I came up with…
We ended up buying 3 of the “Garage Door” size magic mesh units.
I had checked the height of the units and it turned out the main roof headers were exactly the height needed to install the Magic Mesh units. (They were 1″ shorter than advertised.) (Because of this fact, you probably should be sure to measure your units before you do any framing.)
Because the roof slants, I had to add headers at the right height across both ends of the porch.
At both ends of the porch, the Magic Mesh was not long enough to reach the house walls so I added a 2×4 and a 2×8 spliced together with glue and screws to make it wide enough to fill the space between the wall and the ends of the Magic Mesh.
The width of the units allowed for a nicely positioned 2nd opening on the main end that they use .
After the Magic Mesh was installed, I used regular fiberglass screening to fill in the irregular gap on both ends of the porch. In my experience, fiberglass screen has a tendency to pull loose from the staples, even when trim is installed over them. So… before I trimmed over the staples, (I used pcs of 2×2) I ran a bead of caulking over the staples. I know this will help hold the screen tight.
The last thing was to install wood blocks between the rafters to keep bugs from coming in. – A lot eaisier than trying to screen it in!
(Sorry for the blurry image.)
A Few Notes:
- Instructions are provided with each Magic Mesh unit.
- Thumbtacks are provided to help secure the Velcro pieces to the wood frame, but since we wanted a much more permanent install, I put 2 staples in each short piece (used on the vertical framework) and about every foot along the main top Velcro straps.
- The units are also provided with bag-like material attached near each door opening. Each of these is made large enough to hold 2 bricks, but I chose to just roll the material up and use the thumbtacks provided to hold them in place. These are positioned at the bottom of the units to keep the units from blowing in the wind.
- In some places, the mesh may not lay as flat as you like. In these cases, you can just use push-pins or thumbtacks to pin them down.
- I found some trouble when trying to remove the mesh to reposition it in that the Velcro was not sticking tightly to the mesh itself, so be careful to pull the 2 parts of the Velcro apart as/if needed.
