Gazebo Screen & Clear Vinyl in Pointe-Claire

Gazebos in Pointe-Claire

Pointe-Claire has two very different gazebos a few streets apart. In Cedar Park, Valois and Lakeside Heights, the yards behind the postwar bungalows and split-levels carry the classic retail gazebo: aluminum frame, standard-size screen panels, often a clear vinyl (MICA film) kit that came with the model and goes up at the first frost. These yards are the right size for a ten- or twelve-foot gazebo, and a gazebo often follows, a few years behind, the patio door added out back. It is then twenty or thirty years younger than the house, but its original panels are reaching the end: slack mesh, spline working loose, yellowed vinyl. None of that condemns the structure; it is the panel we rebuild, in its own frame.

Down by Lac Saint-Louis, in the old village core, the gazebo changes character. The older houses never had one, and when an owner wanted a place to sit and take in the lake, it was usually built in wood, to measure, with one-of-a-kind panels cut for that structure alone. Those panels are on no store shelf. They also take the wind off the water, which works the clear vinyl without letup and slackens the mesh faster than it would deeper in the suburbs. On these structures, measurements are taken on site, pane by pane, and each panel is rebuilt in its wooden frame — the most accurate way, and the only one that respects a structure you cannot buy again.

Screens and vinyl: what gives out in Pointe-Claire

On the retail gazebos of the postwar neighbourhoods, the fibreglass mesh goes first on the southwest side: it yellows, turns brittle, and tears at the corner where the spline has loosened. The original clear vinyl, held by zippers, stiffens in frost and splits along a zipper when a winter wind balloons it. On the wooden structures by the lake, the story differs: the mesh holds up well, but the vinyl, stretched over larger panes, flaps more and fails sooner. In both cases we rescreen the mesh in the original frame with a new spline, and fit new clear vinyl cut to the actual dimensions of each opening — not a one-size tarp that floats and slaps.

Structure and access in Pointe-Claire

Two structures, two ways in. In the bungalow neighbourhoods the gazebo sits at grade at the back of a fenced yard: we come in along the side of the house, lift out the aluminum panels one at a time, and redo them in the mobile workshop parked out front. On an old-village property, the wooden structure is sometimes several steps below street level, toward the lake, and its panels are held by screws or turn-buttons rather than clips. We mark each one as it comes out, because a carpenter’s panel has no twin. The structure itself, wood or aluminum, is never dismantled or moved for this work.

Wind, sun, insects: choosing in Pointe-Claire

Lac Saint-Louis dictates the materials for waterfront properties: the wind off the water beats on clear vinyl all day long, and fibreglass mesh there slackens within a season or two. Aluminum mesh, being stiffer, keeps its tension in that wind and remains the right pick for panels facing the water. Farther from the lake, in Cedar Park or Valois, houses break the wind and sun takes over: yellowed vinyl on the west side, weakened fibreglass. Vinyl goes up before freeze-up and comes down in spring; on the panels facing the lake it goes on over the screen rather than alone, so the mesh takes part of the wind for it.