Patio Door Screens in Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce

Patio doors in Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce

In the brick duplexes and triplexes of Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, built between 1910 and 1940, the patio door is always an addition. It was not in the original plan: it was cut into the back during a renovation, where a kitchen door or an enlarged window used to be, to open the unit onto the rear balcony or onto a terrace built on the roof of an annex. So it sits in an old brick wall, sometimes between a beam and a floor that have shifted over a century, and its screen panel has whatever size that renovation gave it. On a triplex there can be three patio doors at three heights, installed by three different owners in three different decades.

The English-style cottages of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce rarely have an original patio door; where one exists, it comes from a rear extension — an enlarged kitchen, a sunroom, a family room — and its size follows the framing of the addition rather than a catalogue. In the large post-war apartment towers of Côte-des-Neiges, by contrast, the balcony door is an original feature, installed in series, in narrow aluminum, and it is often the only opening through which air genuinely moves in the unit. The upshot is that there is no typical patio door here, and the panel gets measured before anything is ordered or built.

What gives out on these doors in Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce

On the added door of a plex, the failure often comes from the installation as much as from wear: a track that is not perfectly level puts the panel’s whole weight on one roller, which wears twice as fast, and the panel ends up rubbing on one side and gaping on the other. We adjust the rollers to recover the level, replace them if they are grooved, and rescreen while the panel is out. On the balcony doors of the Côte-des-Neiges towers, it is the wind that does the wearing: the mesh goes slack and flaps, the panel jumps its track when a gust shoves it, and 1965 rollers no longer hold it in. Rollers, track and mesh are handled together, inside the unit. On the cottages, an extension panel has no store equivalent: rescreened if straight, rebuilt to the track’s dimensions if not.

Access and constraints in Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce

Access here is decided at the back. A plex patio door opens onto a rear balcony reached through the unit, or onto a roof terrace above an annex, and the panel is worked on that balcony or in the kitchen — never from the laneway, never from a ladder. Size is the second constraint: a door set into a 1925 brick wall has the height the beam allowed and the width the masonry left, and its panel gets measured before anything else. In the towers, the panel comes out toward the inside of the unit, onto the floor, and goes back into its track from the living room. A full-height panel in a triplex stairwell is handled by two people, without a knock against the brick or the handrail.

Which mesh for your patio door in Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce

The apartment cat often decides the mesh in this borough: on a plex’s rear balcony or a tower balcony, that door is its only window on the outdoors, and ordinary fibreglass does not stand up to its claws — pet-resistant mesh is the answer. At height, in the Côte-des-Neiges towers, aluminum mesh keeps its tension against the gusts the panel takes head-on. On a cottage door sheltered by the yard and the trees of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, standard fibreglass stays the brightest, and city dust rinses off it with water.