![]() ![]() According to experts at TWP Inc., a modern supplier of screening materials, stainless steel is the most durable, especially in versions that incorporate the alloy molybdenum, which retards corrosion. Before deciding which to use, it’s helpful to know their strengths, literally. The same screening options are readily available today, along with a few new ones including aluminum, bronze, and fiberglass. Center the patch, then thread the angled wires through the screen and push them flat to secure the patch. Next, unravel three wires from the patch edge bend ends at 90 degrees, close to the weave. To patch a hole, cut a rectangle of identical screening roughly twice the hole’s size. A choice of screening metals was available by then, too-galvanized steel, black wire cloth (painted steel), and copper, which was the most expensive option. These simple patterns were suited to a wide range of house styles and could be ordered in pine (for painting) or oak (for staining and clear finishing). Examples include straightforward doors with large, open screens on their upper half and a series of differing designs at the bottom-from three narrow, horizontal, rectangular panels to a single rectangle sitting atop two wood panels. Such fancy-style screen doors remained in catalogs after 1900 along with other Victorian holdovers like steamboat Gothic porch trim, but designs without the fussy look were already appearing a decade earlier. Catalogs show door frames divided mid-way by turned spandrels (they serve the same structural purpose as the horizontal lock rail in a panel door) and brackets in corners, some with Eastlake-style complexity, that acted as gussets in what is essentially an empty frame in constant motion. Though often homemade well into the 20th century, by the 1870s screen doors were also a natural product for millwork suppliers and an ideal medium for the fanciful machine woodwork of the Victorian era. These doors provide ample protection and will give years of service. Flies and mosquitoes are a menace to health, and must be kept out of the home, screams text advertising screen doors in a turn-of-the-century catalog. The happy accident came at a time when medical science was beginning to connect insects with diseases, and by the turn of the 20th century no house was considered complete without screens on both windows and doors. ![]() ![]() Then, according to company lore, an enterprising employee coated some sieves with paint, sold them as insect barriers, and a new market was born. The improved sifting screens sold well for decades until the Civil War cut off the southern market and business tanked, leaving the company swimming with screening and frames. Three-panel screen doors, such as the one on this Georgian house, were typical of the Plain Style sold in the 1910s and later. The result was an affordable fine metal cloth that could be stretched on a wood frame. in Connecticut, experimented with mechanically weaving wire screen on looms designed for making carpets. To improve on the horsehair historically used to make sieves for sifting flour and grains, the Gilbert and Bennett Manufacturing Co. Though it was a common practice to tack gauze over window openings to thwart insects, wire screening wasn’t even commercially available until about 1830. Screen doors have been so omnipresent on old houses over the last century that it may be a surprise to learn they were rare before 1870. Fortunately, traditional wood screen doors are designed to be repaired, and when hardware or frames are missing or beyond repair, there’s a bounty of reproductions available to fit the screen door look from any era. Screens, especially, don’t hold up forever, eventually needing either a patch job or complete replacement. Unbelievably light, open, and nearly two-dimensional, screen doors are workhorses that still take a beating from over-eager children, anxious pets, and errant softballs. Victorian-era doors can be decked with spandrels, brackets, and gingerbread trim.
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