Enhance Your Home with Expert Screen Porch Installation in Roswell
Screen America builds custom screened porches in Roswell and across North Fulton. Screens are the whole business here — not a sideline for a deck builder — and have been since 1997.
What the Tree Canopy Changes
Roswell has more mature hardwood than almost anywhere else we work, and it cuts both ways on a screen porch. The shade is the reason people want to sit outside here in July. The leaf litter and pollen are the reason the porch needs thinking about.
Debris sitting in the bottom channel holds moisture against the frame, which is what eventually rots a timber bottom rail and corrodes a cheap aluminium one. On a heavily shaded lot we detail the base differently: the bottom rail sits so it can be swept out rather than packing up, and we would rather use a heavier frame there than the lightest one that would pass.
Screen will not stop pollen — nothing will. What it does is keep the furniture and the floor clean enough to use in April without hosing the whole thing down first.
Near the River
On the lots closer to the Chattahoochee the insect pressure runs heavier and later into the year than it does further inland, and that changes what matters in the build. Insects come in where the screen meets the frame, the deck boards and the house, not through the middle of a panel. On a river-side porch the perimeter is where the time goes: the gap under the bottom rail where a deck is not quite level, and a screen door that does not pull itself square.
A Wider Spread of House Ages Than the Rest of North Fulton
Alpharetta and Johns Creek are mostly one era. Roswell is not — there are 1970s ranches, 1990s subdivisions and new infill within a few streets of each other, and they are three different jobs.
On the older houses the question is usually whether an existing porch is worth keeping: often the structure is sound and only the mesh, the spline and the bottom rail need doing, which is a fraction of a rebuild. On newer builds it is more often a covered patio that wants closing in, or a deck that needs a roof before it can be screened at all — and a deck built to carry furniture is not automatically built to carry a roof.
If You Are in the Historic District
Roswell's historic district has design review, and it is stricter than a subdivision architectural committee. If your house falls inside it, tell us at the assessment. What gets approved there depends on how the addition reads from the street, so it changes what we draw rather than being a form to file at the end.
How a Roswell Project Runs
Four steps, and only one of them happens in your garden.
- The assessment, free. We come out, measure and talk through what the opening will take. No obligation at the end of it. Send a couple of photos first and we can often tell you roughly what is involved before the visit.
- The quote. A figure you can hold us to. The invoice matches it — that is not a promise we invented for the website, it is what customers say in the reviews.
- Six or seven days at the shop. A panel porch is assembled to your measurements before we arrive. Nothing is happening at your house during this part, which is why the two to three weeks end to end feels longer than it is.
- Installation, then the walkthrough. Anywhere from a couple of hours to a full day. We walk the finished job with you before we leave and fix anything that is not right on the spot. If something moves later, call us and we come back.
Before You Call Anyone Else
Ask whoever quotes you how many screened porches they built last year. It is the only thing we build, and have since 1997.
Send a photo of the space through the contact form and we can usually tell you what it would take before anyone drives anywhere.