Winterizing your screen porch

I know its not even full tilt summer yet and I am posting about winterizing.  If your household budget is like mine then you may have to start pulling the finances together early to pull it off.  

We love to enclose our screen porch for the winter and, if we can stand the green house effect ,through the early pollen days of spring.

Porch without 

Hand Hubby and I decided the best a most economical way to do it was to make frame inserts for each section of the screen porch supports.  Then we would attach plastic to those screens.  ..Sounds like a doable plan....  So we took 1 x 1's and metal brackets and built the frames.  So each square "window" on the porch had a frame that would set inside of it.  Handy then headed to Lowe's and purchased a roll of "clear" plastic.  He covered the first frame with it and dropped it into its designated square on the porch.  Lets be clear on one thing "clear" is not always clear.  The plastic was opaque and you could not see out of it at all. Handy is one smart Hubby...He stopped and waited until I saw it before he continued.   I hated it!  So some other options was Plexiglass ...too expensive and break easy....so I headed to Joann's with my coupons and found vinyl film that is used to make furniture covers and table cloth covers and it is clear.  Make sure to you are satisfied with the thickness there are different gauges and that the film is wide enough to fit inside your frames.  I bought all the film for this project at 40-50% off .  

This is not a crystal clear view however you can see out.

I will have to say the first year we had them up we were impressed with the added heat on the porch.  It would be sometimes 20 more degrees warmer on the porch than out side.  The puppies really enjoyed the sun on less than comfortable days (for the south). 

I did not worry about the sagging too much.  The changes in  humidity and temp made the wood expand or shrink so some days the vinyl was tighter.

If your porch does not get direct sunlight you may not get the warmth that we did however if you hate cleaning up the snow, or pollen from your porch this idea is a winner. It took some time and planning, however once it is done, you  just pull them from storage and drop them in. You are done and ready to enjoy your porch year round.

Thank you for stopping by hope you can come again!

Sheryl