Gazebo Screen & Clear Vinyl in Saint-Lambert

Gazebos in Saint-Lambert

The Saint-Lambert neighbourhoods built between 1900 and 1950 have yards that have had time to mature: tall trees, thick hedges, wooden or stone terraces behind English-style brick cottages. A gazebo, in that setting, never came with the house. Where there is one, it is most often a permanent wooden structure designed to suit the cottage, with custom-made screen panels held by mouldings; more rarely, a retail gazebo set on an existing terrace, its standard formats a little out of place but easy to redo. Under the tall trees the film ages in the shade, while the mesh catches leaves, twigs and broken branches.

Near the river, the picture changes altitude. The condo buildings and towers have their terraces and rooftop decks, and that is where the gazebo or panelled pergola goes, often as the unit’s only outdoor corner. The wind there is constant, with nothing to slow it off the water, and film that would last years at ground level in a cottage yard flaps and splits in a single season. The panels of a rooftop gazebo do not go out the window: they travel by elevator or stairwell, one at a time, and return the same way. On those terraces, often the unit’s only outdoor space, the gazebo is not a yard accessory: it is the summer room, used morning to night, and its panels wear accordingly.

Screens and vinyl: what gives out in Saint-Lambert

Under the trees of a cottage yard, what damages the screen panels of a wooden structure is the branches: a tear in the middle of a panel rather than at a corner, or mesh punctured by twigs. We lift the moulding, tension new mesh — aluminum if that face of the gazebo is exposed, fibreglass under the trees — and refit the moulding. In the shade, the film yellows slowly but collects deposits that are washed off without scraping. On a rooftop deck it is the opposite: the film gives way to wind long before it yellows, and the screen panels go slack and lose their spline from constant flapping. We remake the film pane by pane, very tight, and rescreen in aluminum, which stays put where fibreglass bellies out.

Structure and access in Saint-Lambert

A cottage yard is sometimes reached through a narrow passage between two houses or a low gate in a hedge, and a large panel from a wooden structure takes two people to lift down before it goes anywhere. On a rooftop deck it is the elevator car, not the yard, that decides what can go down in one piece: a pergola panel too long for it is separated from its frame before it moves, and nothing ever travels down the outside of the building. In both cases we move neither a post nor a beam; only the panels leave their place, get rebuilt in the mobile workshop, and come back.

Wind, sun, insects: choosing in Saint-Lambert

The river dictates wind, and wind dictates tension: on a high terrace, film must go on tight and well fastened and screening must be aluminum, or both flap until they fail. In the old neighbourhoods the difficulty is shade and what falls from the trees: mesh that dirties, film that stains, branches that punch through. Ordinary summer-evening mosquitoes are handled by standard mesh; near the water, a tight weave also holds back the small insects of spring. Film goes up in the fall, before the cold, and comes down in spring on decks in full sun.