Gazebo Screen & Clear Vinyl in Laval

Gazebos in Laval

If one city in Greater Montreal had to be called the capital of the retail gazebo, it would be Laval. The huge sectors of bungalows and cottages built between 1960 and 1980 in Chomedey, Duvernay and Vimont line up thousands of regular backyards, easily big enough for a ten-by-twelve aluminum or steel structure with its standard-sized panels. Those yards are deep enough that the gazebo becomes the summer room of the house rather than a shelter tucked into a corner of the lot. A good number of these structures went up a decade ago or more; their original panels — film and screening — are what is failing now, not the frame.

At the two ends of the spectrum, two other gazebos. In the old village cores of Sainte-Rose and Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, the older homes sit on irregular, tree-covered lots; the gazebo there is seldom a store product, more often a permanent wooden structure built for the spot, with panels no catalogue can replace. In the recent townhouse and condo developments, the yard is a narrow rectangle between two fences and the gazebo is small — eight by ten, sometimes less — with short panels that the neighbours’ wind sets flapping. Across a territory this large, the question to settle on the phone is simple: what kind of structure, and in which neighbourhood.

Screens and vinyl: what gives out in Laval

On Chomedey, Duvernay or Vimont gazebos past the ten-year mark, the failures nearly always come in the same order: the clear vinyl (MICA film) first — yellowed by summers of full sun, stiffened by winters, split by the first strong April wind — then the screening, which goes slack, opens at a corner or lets go of its spline, often on the panel facing the pool, the one handled most. We replace the film with new clear vinyl cut to the exact size of each pane, in the original frame, and rescreen the mesh panels in theirs. The aluminum frames on these structures are almost always reusable. On a wooden structure in Sainte-Rose, each frame is measured on site and remade to its own dimensions.

Structure and access in Laval

A retail gazebo comes apart by hand: panels unclipped from the uprights, redone at the mobile workshop in the driveway, then put back. The panels of one gazebo are all the same age: the one that failed announces the next, and doing them together means taking the structure apart only once, film and screening alike. In townhouse yards there is no room to lay a panel flat, and the work is done in the vehicle. On a permanent wooden structure in an old village core, the panels are screwed or set in mouldings; we free them without forcing, and the structure is never modified.

Wind, sun, insects: choosing in Laval

A Laval cottage yard is generally open and sunny, especially around a pool where nothing casts shade: the film yellows fast and fibreglass weakens. Aluminum screening earns its place on the panels most exposed to wind, and pet-resistant screening on the lower panels of a yard where a dog or cat roams. In the tree-covered yards of the old cores, shade protects the film but brings more evening insects; a tight mesh makes a difference there. The film goes on before the first cold, while the gazebo still serves on fall evenings.