Gazebo Screen & Clear Vinyl in Kirkland

Gazebos in Kirkland

Kirkland was planned around the backyard. Between the 1970s and the 1990s, the West Island's large brick cottages and split-level homes were set on lots where the yard runs deep, deep enough for a big deck and a gazebo — and a pool where there is one — without anything touching. Double patio doors open straight onto it. This is the subdivision of the large-format retail gazebo: aluminum or steel frame, often with a hard roof, wide side panels, sized for a back yard deep enough to hold a large deck. The deeper the yard, the farther the gazebo sits from the house, and the more exposed it is.

These gazebos have two enemies in a Kirkland yard: wind, which crosses a deep yard with nothing to stop it before the back fence, and use. A gazebo at the far end of a deep yard serves as the summer room: it is the door that gets handled, never the side panels, so the door is what wears first, usually along its zipper. Where a small-yard gazebo ages quietly, a Kirkland gazebo works for a living. The original film, put on at purchase, has often already split, and the owner is caught between replacing the whole thing — impossible to find in the same dimensions — and redoing the panels. The second option is what we do.

Screens and vinyl: what gives out in Kirkland

On a large-format gazebo the panels are wide, and a big expanse of clear vinyl (MICA film) or mesh gives the wind more to grab than a small one: the film bellies, beats, splits at a corner; fibreglass slackens and flaps; the spline, pushed by the tension, works out of its groove along a long side. The door panel, the one handled most, is nearly always the first to give, often along the zipper. We take down each panel, redo the film or mesh to exact size in the original frame with a new spline, and put it back. On the low panels the dog leans against, pet-resistant mesh replaces standard fibreglass without changing the frame.

Structure and access in Kirkland

Kirkland's difficulty is size. A large-format gazebo panel is long, thin and flexible: it takes two people, travels flat, and is redone on a bench long enough to stretch the film in one motion, without a fold. With the gazebo at the far end of a deep yard, the panels travel to the mobile workshop in front of the house, or the workshop moves in along the side of the lot when the passage allows. Where there is a pool, we work away from the water and make sure no spline or offcut ends up in it. The structure itself, hard roof included, does not move.

Wind, sun, insects: choosing in Kirkland

A deep yard, open to the neighbours' yards, takes the wind head-on: that is why film gives out so often here, and why we stretch it tight and put it on the windward faces before the first cold. Full south sun yellows the exposed panes in a few seasons; those panes get redone before the others. For the screens, panel width is what decides: on a face as wide as those of a large-format gazebo, a soft mesh dishes enough to be seen from the deck, while the same mesh stays flat on a narrow panel. And because the gazebo sits far from the house, anything missing when it is closed back up costs a return trip: zippers and panel clips get checked before the workshop is packed away.