DIY Challenge: Screened Porch

A childhood friend of mine used to invite friends up to her family's old cottage in Healdsburg, where five or six of us would sleep outside on a screened-in porch. Heavenly! Remembering those days has got me thinking about how hard it would be to screen in an existing porch. Maybe it's a bit late in the summer for such a big outdoor project, but then again, some of Northern California's warmest days arrive in early fall. In case you're up for it, we found some good tutorials and inspiration...

An existing porch can easily be screened to make it a more viable outdoor room, especially for sleeping outdoors. The DIY Network has a step-by-step tutorial.

If you've got carpentry skills (or friends with carpentry skills!), Reader's Digest has a detailed set of plans for a simple screened porch using basic framing and building techniques.

Or if you're looking for a more temporary solution to last through the temperate fall, you can always use mosquito netting to create a screened-in effect. Mosquito nets can be hung like curtains, with velcro used to create a seal. Check out the how-to here.

For more inspiration, check out these posts from Apartment Therapy:
• Summer Inspiration: The Sleeping Porch
• My Great Outdoors: Cogan's Screened In Porch
• Sleeping Porches
• Mosquito Curtains: Beating the Mosquitos in Style
• House Tour: AB Chao's Modern + Old = MOLD

(Images: Canadian House and Home; AB Chao, via Apartment Therapy)

Comments (2)

My Dad built a screened porch onto the house where I grew up. His trick was to have large pre-made frames, an upper and lower. He would stretch the screening over the frames and staple them and they would in turn fit into the sections of the wall. That way whenever he had to replace any screening he would just pop out a section and repair.

When we had a dog he built a diagonal faux-lattice type of insert of wood to install in the lower sections so that the dog didn't run through the screening. It was really cool looking and it kept the dog from further destruction.

If you've got appropriately placed existing beams already (and I know many folks wouldn't) I bought some malaria mosquito nets and hung them from the beams to enclose the space for very little money and on a non-permanent basis.