Bouts à la maison quotidiens de rénovation

In Part 1 and Part 2 we described how we needed more air ventilation from the outside yet we did not want a traditional screen door to cover our nice new front door as well as we had no idea how one installs a traditional screen door on a pair of out-swing French Doors.

The solution we have opted to implement are retractable screen doors from DreamScreens Canada. We saw the product and met Elizabeth, the owner, at a local home show in the spring. We compared the DreamScreens Canada product to its competitors and found it to be superior.

One of the aspects we liked was how a home owner could install this product for themselves without any specialized equipment other than a hack saw.

For our purposes, I just did not have the time to install the retractable screen door this spring with everything else going on so I selected the option to have DreamScreens Canada to install it for me. Besides, the first door to have the retractable screen would be the French Doors which opened out, yes, out onto the deck off of the kitchen eating area. I have to admit that I thought it might be above my abilities, even with the excellent information on the manufacturer’s web site.

So, Dean from the manufacturer arrived and immediately went to work. The first thing he did was to examine our particular French Door setup and discuss installation alternatives. If you are going to order and install this product yourself the first decision that has to be made by you is the exact location of the unit.

This product can be installed either within the door frame containing the existing door or on the outside on the moulding part of the door frame itself.  Usually when installed on the moulding on the outside of the door frame, the unit containing the screen would be placed at the edge of the door frame.

However, the type of moulding we had around the door frame was, how do I say this, ‘curvy’. This meant that to have a solid fit, the 2 inch wide unit containing the screen would need to be installed on the far (less curvy) side of the moulding. We agreed with Dean, that this would not look as attractive as if we had the more traditional installation within the door frame itself.

Once the location was agreed, Dean took the height measurements. And, typical of many houses, the right side of the door frame was slightly higher than the left. I started to frown but Dean said he sees it all the time.

We will follow the on-site assembly of the hardware containing the screen when retracted (don’t worry ….. if you order a DreamScreens retractable screen door to install yourself it comes already assembled for you) in the next article when we return to our retractable screen series in a few days.

To continue with the next article in this series, simply select this link to Part 4.