Tuesday 8 August 2017

Home made fly screen door...

There are many things that come with the summer months, sun (if you live in the UK thunder storms) and bugs, mainly flies and lets be honest not many people are fans of flies, yes they do an important job, but they can do it somewhere else other than our kitchen.

Like many people we like to have doors and windows open in the summer, trouble is things will get in, so to that end I decided to make a simple fly screen door.

Here it is -

Not much to it really.
It's basic a wooden frame, I used cls timber that I cut up into more usable bits with my table saw.

The mesh for the screen I found on Amazon, I did check the local diy type stores, but they didn't have anything that was fine enough to keep out bugs, the piece I bought didn't cost much and most places let you order what you need, so you can measure up and just order enough to cover a doorway, like I did.

The mesh - 

It's quite fine.

I chose a fine mesh to stop almost all bugs, only really small ones can get, it doesn't obscure the view from the back door that much either.

You can see through it well enough - 

Can still see what's going on.


Here's a basic diagram of the frame - 

Pretty simple.

Once I'd made the basic frame I stapled the mesh to it, then using some thin pieces of wood I'd cut I covered up where the staples were to make it look a bit neater, then I gave it a coat of green wood preserver.

Although the screen is currently fixed to the wall with hinges the idea is to remove it in the winter, this is just a case of removing a couple of screws, I had originally intended to use barrel hinges so the screen could just be lifted off, but went with something a little more secure in the end, it only takes a minute or two to wind out the screws with a cordless drill.

To stop the screen opening I've just used a simple hook and eye at the top - 


It does the job.

There are different ways you could make a screen like this, I made our screen fit inside the brick work so that it closes quite tightly to the back door to make sure there are no gaps for bugs to get in.

And as this is a simple wood working project almost anyone can make it, you can buy wood at the right size from most diy shops, rather than having to cut it down like I did.

It's simple but it works, and that's the main thing, we now get a lot less bugs and flies in the house, of course you do have to remember to close it.

Bug free (ish) - 

Need to figure out where to put it over winter.

Thanks for reading.