Come On In and Sit for a While

We are now on our third screen house in as many years. The first was a very cheap one that we put in the woods for the shade. The first strong wind blew it over and it went tumbling into the woods and we had a tough time finding all the parts to put it back together. We staked it better and another storm came through and blew it further into the woods. After the third time it was so trashed that we didn't bother putting it up again. We saved some of the poles and they are now plant stakes.

Last year we decided to try again, only this time we'd get a very nice and expensive, heavy duty one. We brought it home and put it together. It had ornate, strong steel corners. It had sun curtains so we decided to put it in the yard closer to the house. There was no storm forecast, just a gentle, light summer breeze. We left for dinner and Mike's end of the year play. After the play we stopped at the store for some rope to stake it with. Too late! We came home to find it on it's side - bent and mangled. John somehow managed to bend all of the pieces back to their original shape and put it back together. We staked it and then staked it some more. This time we got several weeks of use before we got a big storm that trashed it again. Again John was able to get it back up and it seemed like it was going to stay - we had several more good weeks. I have an old iron glider that had been in storage and got the boys to bring it over. I cleaned it up, painted it and bought cushions. It was no sooner moved in than the screen house was blown over for the third & final time.

You can see one of the cross supports that we had trouble fixing.

This year we tried to find another one just like last years figuring we'd at least have extra parts. We thought we'd sink fence posts in the corners, paint them black and tie each corner. Nobody had the same one for sale in this area. We decided not to spend alot if the parts we had wouldn't do us any good so when the local grocery chain put these on sale we thought we'd give it a try. We put it behind the garage to help block the wind some. Those are the corner pieces from last year against the garage waiting to be turned into trellis'. If you look closely at the front right corner you'll see a bulge. We took 5' steel-core stakes and drove two into each corner and then duct taped the corner poles to them. So what happened when we got our first storm? The stakes held, the roof filled with water and the whole top collapsed in! I need to get some grommets for each side to let the water drain and then I think we might finally have a winner!

It looks cozy, doesn't it? And the sun curtains from last year are an almost perfect match. We need a few more bags of sand for the floor. I expect many warm summer evenings will be spent here.