screens.

So now that the house is (mostly) painted it is also time to replace the crappy ghetto screens I built shortly after moving in.

Exhibit A (of said crappy ghetto screens) -


Uhh, yeah - but I didn't really have any tools back then and the house looked like crap anyway OK.

But for the 'New & Improved' design I was going to employ my new-ish table saw and (of course - duh) my pocket hole jig. I have mentioned I was going to get some mileage out of that thing. So I was wandering around the trim aisles of the Home Depot debating whether or not to spend $80 on four new sheets of beadboard for the porch ceiling while also looking for (hopefully) pre-primed 1x4s. Well, I came across something sort of cool - a vinyl 1x4 (x12'). No priming, painting, rotting, etc. of course. So I thought I'd give it a try.

So today I cut it up and put together a little sample to see if the pocket holes would hold in the vinyl and the screen spline I bought would work (who knew it came in so many different diameters - so I guessed) with the width of the table saw blade kerf -


(luckily it seems I chose wisely cos it did) -

Well, that was easy. And then from the front they'll look like this -

A slight improvement over the, uhh, previous design. Now I just need to decide if I want to use the vinyl stuff (which is about $1/linear ft) or just buy cheap pine 1x4 dimensional stuff and prime/paint it (much cheaper and I already have lots of primer and brilliant white Benjamin Moore left). I think I'll actually end up doing that cos I need to do eight windows and the difference in cost will probably be somewhat substantial - and the windows and trim are all wood so the vinyl actually looks a little off.

But at least now I know the design works.

ps - oh, and painting lattice sucks.

pps - Matt took back his stapler last week so that evening probably within the hour I went online and ordered one for myself (different than the one he had which shot an awful lot of blanks but I made sure it had a belt hook like his cos that was invaluable when installing the cedar). And, uhh, I am excited to get it. Yes, another power tool. Money. Can use it to hang up the lattice. Install the beadboard. Install the cedar on the garage next year. Any and all trim work I do from here on out. Etc. Afterall - I bought $80 worth of (5000) flippin' staples that I need to somehow use up.