Gazebo Screen & Clear Vinyl in Terrebonne

Gazebos in Terrebonne

Lachenaie and La Plaine were built after 1980: two-storey houses, semis, townhouses, each with a patio door opening onto a backyard of carefully measured size. That is the natural ground of the store-bought gazebo, set on the deck or on pavers at the back of the lot, often bought in the same season as the hot tub or the above-ground pool. On townhouse streets the yard is narrow and fenced on both sides: the gazebo takes nearly the full width, one side hard against the fence, and its panels on the walkway side take every knock — the barbecue being moved, the wheelbarrow, the kids.

Old Terrebonne is a different register. Around the stone and wood houses of the 19th century a gazebo is never original; where there is one, it was added — a wood structure built to suit the house, or a pergola closed in with made-to-measure panels. These structures have one-off openings, often taller than anything sold in a box, and the wood in them has worked with the years. Lots there are larger and more planted than in the newer developments, which shelters from the wind but brings the evening insects closer.

Screens and vinyl: what gives out in Terrebonne

On the store-bought gazebos of Lachenaie and La Plaine the clear vinyl (MICA film) goes first: put up to stretch the hot-tub season, it takes the whole summer’s sun, yellows, hardens in the cold and splits at a corner under a gust funnelled between two houses. The screen, taken out and put back every year, tears where the spline holds it or sags across the big panels. The aluminum or steel frame is almost always sound. We measure each pane, cut clear vinyl to the exact size and fit it into the original frame; the screen is rescreened in that same frame with new spline and the tension brought back. On a wood structure in Old Terrebonne the same work is done opening by opening, in the existing grooves.

Structure and access in Terrebonne

In a semi or a townhouse the yard is often reached only through a narrow side passage or through the house: a store-bought gazebo panel, long and light, is then handled with both hands and brought out one at a time. It also needs a flat place to be rebuilt — the deck or the garage floor will do. On a permanent wood structure the panels are screwed into their openings rather than clipped; they come unscrewed, get rebuilt, and go back into the same holes. In both cases the gazebo structure is never touched — not its posts, not its roof.

Wind, sun, insects: choosing in Terrebonne

In a recent development the hedges have no height yet and the yards pass the wind to one another: the vinyl slaps, and its tension is what saves or loses it. Pulled tight in a straight frame it holds; loose, it wears through at the corner. The sun on those open yards yellows the vinyl, and on the south face the fibreglass screen weakens too. Around the treed lots of La Plaine or the old sector a tighter weave stops the small evening insects; and on the panels along the walkway, the ones already taking the barbecue and the wheelbarrow, pet-resistant mesh shrugs off snags that ordinary fibreglass does not.