After I had built the deck, my focus turned to the patio. My beautiful wife has a strong aversion to bugs and especially mosquitoes, which for some reason, do prefer to attack her rather than myself. One day we started discussing screening in the patio, and we looked at what others had done. Most completely screen in the area, and add a door for access. They looked nice, but I wanted to keep the option of totally opening it up (for the nice days with no mosquitoes). And being an engineer, there’s just something about mechanisms and versatility that makes me excited. So I started researching sliding screen doors and bi-folding screen doors. I didn’t find much information on either. I decided to go with accordion style folding doors (bifold doors) to allow for maximum openness. And with the space I had, I would only need two sets of folding doors (to cover an 11 ft section and a 16 ft section). I used a simple door design built out of cedar 2x6’s. The end result was excellent, as you can see. If you’re thinking of building something similar, you’ve found the right place. Let’s jump into the details.
Planning
The key details here are the size of your openings. My patio is already mostly enclosed, so I needed only a 11 ft span and 16 ft span. With these spans, I decided to build 3 doors on the left hand (11 ft) side and 4 doors on the right hand (16 ft) side. This gave me slightly different width doors on each side, but close enough widths not to look weird. I went with a lower number of doors, partly to save money, and partly to keep an open feel with less wood blocking the views. Some important strategy:
· A 3-door (or odd number) setup is ideal if you want a traditional feeling door opening.
If you will generally leave your doors closed, I highly recommend it.
I tried a few half-baked latch ideas which floundered, and eventually just built a simple jamb, and installed a lever latch to the door.
By using a chest latch on the first two doors, they are held steady while the third door is allowed to open and close like a traditional door.
I cut the jamb out of a 2x4 and screwed it into my middle column.
The door action is great, it sounds just like a slamming screen door should. Making the jamb and installing the latch seemed like too much complexity when I was planning, but after building it, it went together easy and the end result is fantastic. Again - highly recommended
· A 4-door (or even number) setup is easiest to fasten with chest latches.
Initially I used small latches, but they tended to fail when storms blew through. However, this was not totally the latches fault, they may have survived if I had bolted them through the full thickness of the door rather than a screw installation.
None the less, I felt like a bigger latch with a bigger footprint was needed and bought this
https://amzn.to/2M8ffV5 . I went ahead and through-bolted it for added stability.
I used washers on the back side to distribute the bolt load.
Hopefully these hold up. I certainly think the weak point is now in the door material itself.
If I have another failure, it will probably involve a lot of wood glue and maybe some mending plates in the repair.
Regarding folding door hardware, if your plans are anything like mine, I highly recommend the Johnson 100FD folding door hardware kit . I was way over their recommended width, but the hardware still works great. The wide doors give a “grand” look. The downside, is the doors do tend to rack (tilt) down in the open position; however, they are so light they are easily moved with the handles. I feel like the design is a great balance of aesthetics and function. But if you have any concerns with the wide doors, you could always go skinnier or put ball casters on the bottoms of the doors. These ball transfer bearings were my contingency in case I didn’t like the action of the door opening, but I did not need them. Johnson also has bottom tracks if you're interested, but I didn't want anything on the floor.
Johnson has pretty good documentation and recommended clearances on all of their hardware, if you care to look it up. I generally ignored all of their recommendations and pushed the clearances as low as I could (to minimize mosquitoes). But this depends a bit on your drivers for the screen doors, and the mating surfaces around the doors. The nice thing about this hardware and plan, is that you don’t need any flashing or jamb around the doors, and you just utilize the existing walls. However, note that exterior walls and outdoor patios are not necessarily flat and planer. Everything had a slight slope to it, so measure carefully and consider this with your project. From my project, even though I pushed the clearances pretty tight, I still had minimal rework once I had the doors installed.
I used cedar for my door material. This is a good material because it is stable (minimal warpage over time) and outdoor friendly. It's light, which is nice for this project since the big wide doors are still easy to move. It is also easy to woodwork and stain and is readily available at moderate prices. One could attempt pressure treated pine, but if you’re putting this much labor into a project, I’d definitely recommend the cedar. It will cost a few hundred more up front, but it will look better, crack less, warp less, and last just as long. Or if you’re really adventurous and/or ambitious and/or rich and/or lucky all of the high end decking materials (IPE etc) or front door materials could potentially be used. One other note on wood selection - if you don't want to mill stock (don't have at least a planer), consider buying s3s cedar or s4s cedar. The upfront cost is higher but it saves a ton of time and you won't have to buy or borrow a planer. I saw some 1" thick s3s when I was sourcing cedar, and it might just work for this design.
Here are the dimensions and views of my overall design. Note that my boards are 5.200 wide (typical), so the top of the middle rail is about 36" from the floor. If you look close you can see where the groove has been cut for the trim. The exploded views let you see how the half-laps go together.
A few things before we start buying wood and cutting chips:
1. Evaluate your space:
o Measure openings and consider that the outdoor walls may have a slight slope.
o Look at where your patio floor meets the wall to get a feel for how sloped/flat the floor is
o Consider what you will be mounting the hardware track onto. I took a look in the attic and identified a beam to tap into.
o Think about where the doors will store when you open them. For my patio it was an obvious choice but for others this may be a big decision.
2. Make design and material choices
o Height Clearance: My opening height was 99 inches (before the track) and I built my doors 96.75” tall. The track is 1.25” tall, so that left about 1” of total clearance. I cut slight recesses on the top and bottom of the doors. Overall, the top of my doors are darn near flush with the track in some spots (had to sand it down) but about 1/8” clearance on average. The bottom has about 1” clearance to the floor on average, and this was needed due to the slope of my patio floor.
o Width Clearance: My horizontal openings were 194.25” and 131.5” on the 4 and 3 doors sides, respectively. I built my doors at 48-7/16 wide and 43-11/16 wide for the different sides. At these widths I had about 1/2" of total horizontal clearance (1/4” on each side). This worked out fine.
o The Look: I really liked my end product with the chair rail height board breaking up the doors and adding some extra rigidity - the middle board in my setup is 36" from the bottom of the door to the top of the board (it's 5.2" wide, so 30.8" from bottom of board to floor). Take a look at the guys at www.screendoors.com for inspiration if you need it. Just remember, the choices you make now will have to be repeated multiple times 😊
o Trim: Early on I chose to have the trim on the inside of my doors. In hindsight, since you primarily see these bifolding screen doors from one direction I could have flipped them so that the groove for the screen was on the outside and then you don’t even need trim. It creates a really streamlined look (see my doors from my “outside” direction). As is, I used the cheapest trim I could find, and it worked out well.
o Door Joints: I used half lap joints as they are relatively easy to cut and they are strong joints and look good in this project. If you have a strong preference for mortise and tenon joints, go for it, but in my opinion they aren't needed for folding screen doors like this.
o Door Width: Consider how wide of doors to use and what material you want to use on the doors. This will drive the number of doors and a lot of other design considerations. Johnson recommends even doors, but I used 3 on one side of my install and it worked fine. My 48.5" wide doors are about as wide as I would recommend, but you could always try wider if you think it will work for you.
o The Track: If you use the Johnson 100FD set, you will notice Johnson advises not to splice the track. However, I used multiple splices and the rollers perform just fine going across the splices. I aligned them reasonably well, but they are not perfectly aligned, and you don’t even notice. Search around, but I ended up buying 8 ft pieces from Walmart online. Side note, it cut easily with the existing wood cutting blade I had on my miter saw but go slow and keep it secure.
Now is a good time to start thinking about cost as well, see my totals on this post. Obviously, there are a lot of choices that can push this up and down, but for the consumed materials (wood, glue, hardware, trim, weatherstripping, handles, etc) I spent about $1,000 on my seven doors. The cedar 2x6’s cost about $400 and the remaining $600 was parts. It could be done cheaper, but not too much cheaper, so use this as a good estimate.
Cutting Wood
I planned out the cut list to try to optimize my material usage. Here's mine for reference (as you can see, I did not minimize waste):
Qty
|
Board Length
|
Cut 1
|
Cut 2
|
Remainder
|
|
A
|
9
|
12
ft
|
Std Stile 97"
|
LHS Rail 43-11/16
|
4.3"
|
B
|
3
|
12
ft
|
Std Stile 97"
|
48"
|
|
C
|
2
|
12
ft
|
Pivot Stile 96-3/8"
|
RHS Rail 48-7/16
|
0.187
|
D
|
3
|
12
ft
|
RHS Rail 48-7/16
|
RHS Rail 48-7/16
|
48.125
|
E
|
2
|
10
ft
|
RHS Rail 48-7/16
|
RHS Rail 48-7/16
|
24.125
|
If you have a jointer, you know what to do here and you can skip ahead. If you only have a planer like me, follow along. If you don't have a planer, consider buying one or find s3s wood.
My biggest splash of this whole project was buying this Dewalt planer. I don't want to muddy up this guide too much with planer (and jointer) talk, so I'll save that for another post. But in short, the DW734 planer worked great for this project. I started by planing down my 2x6's to a 1.25" thickness. I could have left it even thicker as my material was cleaning up with hardly any passes.
Since I didn't joint the boards, some did have a slight bow and cup. I tried to minimize these issues by selectively choosing the rails and stiles. Masking tape labels help with this process. There are some neat "jointing jigs" for planers out on youtube and such. I saw these after I had already planed my wood. Regardless, the doors went together well despite the slight bowing and cupping.
After planing, I cut the boards 1/2" extra long. This let me edge joint them.
You don't need a jointer to true up the side edges. I built this sled, and it worked great: https://www.woodmagazine.com/woodworking-plans/tablesaw/straight-edge-cutting-jig I used these toggle clamps and they worked really well. The 8 ft stiles were a little tricky, since that's as long as the plywood, but it still worked. The Frued thin-kerf rip blade was a really good blade for these rips and if left a good finish on the edges. When you joint the first edge on the sled, be careful to line it up as straight as possible and minimize waste. You can always make another pass if it doesn't clean up all the way. Clean up the last edge without using the sled, and just with your rip fence. If you don't have roller stands (in feed / out feed) I highly recommend them for this project.
From here, I put the boards through the planer sideways (to plane the thin edges). This gave a perfect finish and perfect width.
Then to cut them to finish length I used the miter saw. I rigged up a 2x4 to connect it to my miter saw stand (which is actually an Ikea kitchen island we had picked up in Singapore, long story). With the 2x4 effectively connected to the miter saw I could set stop blocks to give me repeatable lengths. I didn't get a picture of this setup, but it's an easy enough concept so hopefully this helps. I used the roller stands to support the 2x4 and clamped some angle iron onto the 2x4 at my desired lengths. I cut the board a tad long and slowly dialed in my length by moving the angle iron in.
Now for the half laps. If you're not familiar with half laps, they are simple joints with half of each side of the to-be-joined boards cut out. On my stiles (long vertical boards) I had two half laps on the ends and a T joint (a half lap in the middle of a board) in the middle. A thorough overview of the joint can be found here. Since all my boards are the same width, this made my joints easier to cut.
I didn't have a dado blade set, so I went ahead and bought the Irwin Marples. I made a zero clearance insert for my table saw, which was a small project if you haven't done it before. Since my boards were not perfectly straight, I had to shim the opposite end of the board up and down to get the joint location perfectly flat with my the table saw. This took a bit of learning. I used the rip fence as my depth gage by locating against the fence and then nudging the board off the fence a few hairs. For safety you don't want to be in contact with the rip fence when cross-cutting. I used a clamp to hold the board to my Incra miter gauge. The big lesson learned is that it's hard to move the long stiles on the table saw, and the final cut of my half lap was not always perfectly perpendicular / square to the board. A sliding miter saw with a depth stop would have been a very handy tool to have (as-is that is on my wish list).
The T joint (middle half lap) is cut similar to the others. Just be careful about cutting the groove to your plans, it's easy to accidentally cut to the wrong side of the groove. I cut my middle groove 36 inches from the bottom. This is a common chair rail height and looked about right and would work for a relatively tall dog (if I had actually built the doggie door). Similarly to my miter saw, I used a 2x4 connected to the end of the table saw to locate the end of the groove and give me the correct location to start the groove - effectively an extra long rip fence extension. I set another stop for the end of the groove, and then just hogged out all of the material in between. Take care with this sort of approach to make sure your stop is secure and square and will give repeatable results.
Assembling (glue, hardware, screen, etc.)
It was a glorious day when all the half laps were done. Now began copious glue ups. First, the glue. After my screen door research, I settled on gorilla glue (the 4 oz was cheapest when I was building, and helps leftovers not dry out - I used about 10 oz total). Tight Bond III is also a very popular option. If you haven't done many glue ups, use enough glue that you get a bit of squeeze out at each joint, between all surfaces. Give the glue ~30 minutes or so to dry and then it is easy to scrape off. There is a sweet spot where it isn't too gooey but is still soft enough to scrape off.Second - the clamps. I bought most of mine from harbor freight, but amazon has a lot of options too. As you can see, it's nice to have ~15 or so clamps... I purchased some pipe clamps for this project, they are super handy. You could do it without, but hey you're this far in, why not.
Third - the strategy. Measure the diagonals and square up your frame as best as possible. I found measuring the diagonals accurately difficult, and trusted the carpenter's square.
Next, I laid the doors flat on my workbench and sanded the glue of the joints, and touched up any other areas which needed it.
No need to get too carried away with perfection on the sanding, as there are still a few steps to go, and these tend to get beat up a bit outdoor anyway.
Now it’s time to prepare for routing the rabbet groove for the trim.
I used 7/16 x 11/16 round-over base shoe
moulding. It was the cheapest trim I could find.
It is made of pine, so hopefully it doesn’t weather poorly, but it shouldn’t generally be wet, and I stained it for protection.
I ordered the Freud multi-depth rabbeting bit for this task. You can change out the bearing for your trim, or for other projects.
I used the bearing for a 7/16” deep cut, and I used two passes to make the cut.
My first cut was basically at the full cut of the bit, as my router couldn’t quite suck it up into the machine.
But the router and bit handed the material removal quite well and it never felt unsafe.
It does make a ton of sawdust though.
On the next cut, I lowered the bit, using a piece of trim as a guide.
A lesson learned is to cut 1/32 or so deeper than the trim to account for the thickness of the screen and the staples.
My first door I cut even with the trim, but then the screen and staples made the trim stand proud and I had to sand it down.
One other thing to watch out for is if you have any knots or defects on the internal edges of your door (see the first router pic above, and the knot is shown moments before my oops).
The rabbeting bit follows the edge by design, and so if there is any interruption, the cut will follow it and you’ll end up with an “oops”.
Learn from my mistakes, or if you make the same mistake, fill it up with a bunch of wood filler like me.
After rabbeting around both of my interior openings, out comes the chisel.
This was my first significant experience with the chisel.
It helped to carefully trace the corner with pencil to keep me straight.
Also, it helps to routinely sharpen the chisel on a sharpening stone.
I can say, after chiseling out 56 of these corners, I’m decent at it now.
It’s kind of a relaxing, moment of Zen task.
At this point, I went ahead and stained the front of the door.
Since it was already horizontal on the workbench, it made it a tad easier.
Stain/paint options abound, but for the combination of looks and ease of application I highly recommend Ready Seal.
It does not get any easier to apply, and it looks freaking great (I also use it on my fence and deck).
After installing the screen and trim, I picked up the doors and stained the back.
That’s the other nice thing about Ready Seal, you can apply bit by bit and it doesn’t hurt or detract from the look at all.
We’re getting closer to the finish line now, and we’re ready for the screen.
I chose Adfors Pet Screen.
I have two kids and two dogs, so it seemed like an obvious choice, and the reviews were superb.
It is a bit “dark” for a screen, but my wife likes that for privacy.
There are tons of different screen options out there to suite your preferences, lighter screens that are more see through and darker sun screens for even more privacy and shade.
Go nuts.
Similar to chiseling out corners, stapling in the screen took me a bit of practice to perfect.
The screen on my first few doors is a little loose and
poofy, but the last half of doors is quite taught and springy.
Anyway, pull the crap out of the screen door when you install it.
And it you don’t own an air compressor and staple gun buy one now.
I used Harbor Freight staples which are zinc plated for corrosion protection.
I’ll let you know how they hold up.
A few screen stapling tips:
·
True up top edge
·
“L” shape - start in the corner and then do a long side, then make an L with a short side
· Blend any poofiness in the last edge by stapling the middle first and then gradually spreading out any poofs
To mortise the hinges, I used the Ryobi mortise template.
Since I used narrow hinges, I used a shim (from jointing the boards) to adjust the depth the hinge mortise.
Duct tape worked (still holding strong!). The key to mortising the hinges is:
a)
Cutting the hinges on the correct side of the door (I drew this out a couple times and would constantly recheck)
b)
And aligning the hinge location on adjoining doors.
I found it easiest to align by standing the two doors up that were going to be hinged together, clamp them, and pencil in the hinge locations.
The Ryobi jig worked super well.
I cut my hinges 7 inches from the top and 11 from the bottom.
This is more or less a standard door hinge placement, but there are other “standards” as well.
I chiseled out the corners with a razor blade (xacto knife).
Then, I fit the hinge in and predrilled holes for the mounting screws.
Getting closer, now it’s time to install the Johnson hardware.
Refer to the directions and make sure you’re putting the right hardware in the right spot.
I had cut some recesses for my hardware as shown because I used tighter clearances. I ended shimming the first set of doors up a tad (cut the recesses deeper than need – couldn’t open the doors all the way due to dragging on the floor).
I then over-corrected and cut them too shallow and the other set of doors drug on the top against the track. These small issues were solved with some recuts and sanding.
Installing the track was not too difficult.
I used some washers to shim the track and make it level, as the stucco ceiling was not quite flat. Don't forget to load the traveling pivots into the track before the ends are trapped. The bottom pivots required drilling into the concrete patio.
That was difficult, make sure you use a hammer drill and masonry bit and masonry screws (tapcons) if you’re in a similar situation.
Hanging the doors went relatively smoothly.
With the bottom pivot locked into the slab, I located that pin first and swung in from the direction of the track to get the top pivot in.
Once the pivot door is installed, the others follow easily.
On my door (the third door on the left) I fashioned a L shaped jamb out of a 2x4 and screwed it into the column. I tried a few other options with eyes and hooks, but they didn't work very well. The door knob and jamb have worked great. I ran to Home Depot and picked up this lever type door knob. Only slight issue is that since my door was only 1.25" thick, the knob had to be adjusted by hack saw to work on my door. With that out of the way, installing the knob took a hole saw and spade bit and some chiseling, but overall it wasn't too bad.
Notes on hardware and corrosion: It’s difficult to perform projects like this with 100% stainless or galvanized hardware and fasteners (unless you spare no expense). Corrosion is the long term pitfall of many outdoor kitchens and similar outdoor features. Although my screen doors are moderately protected from the rain, they will get wet and they will see quite a bit of humidity. So this lead me to search for the baddest (in a good way) corrosion inhibitor I could find. There is a lot of stuff out there and some cool home experiments. The gun community is probably the most vocal and notable user of similar products. But based on my search I went with Corrosion X - HD. It’s a bit pricey but it sticks to the metal well and so far so good. The reviewers rave about it. I applied this to all the hinges, clamps, pivots, screws, and other hardware. So far so good.
I also did use these stainless screws in a few places (hinges and weatherstripping).
Weatherstipping:
·
On the bottom, I went with 1.5” brushes and holders from North Shore. They worked really well.
·
On the pivot sides, this rubber flapped garage seal bottom works great. I stapled it to the door.
Word of warning, if you want to glue this definitely use the Frost King brand. I had the MD brand as well, but the rubber they use can't be glued. The Frost King glued up great with this weatherstipping glue and might glue with other adhesives as well, but I had already bought the special glue when I was messing with the other brand.
Conclusion
This was one of the bigger projects I've taken on, but it was super enjoyable and the results are awesome. IT looks better and has more functionality that other screened in patios, and I was able to build it myself at a fraction of the cost. Feel free to ask questions in the comments.Random additional notes from the process:
o Use a sacrificial boards of same thickness (1.25) to dial in depth and give a practice run. Note that cups and bows will wreak havoc with your dados… Make sure your support table is flat and even / level with the table saw. I achieved best results starting on the edge of the face and working into the board from there.o Cutting the half laps on the 8 ft stiles was difficult. It was very helpful to have a smooth planed 2x4 piece of ceder to shim the workbench up or down per piece. Some pieces were slightly bowed and twisted, and I adjusted the shims frequently to keep the board flat against the table saw.
o Make sure you dado the same sides of all faces
o Do one full door set first, and try the layout - this means do all the end laps first setting the fence/stop block to get the correct cut length. Do the middle dado’s last and do the first try with only two.
Doggie door: The doggie door got vetoed at the end. The dogs kept peeing on the patio, and so we decided to leave the doggie door out so we can better train them not to pee on the patio. I may end up modifying this door at some point to add the doggie door back in. None the less, here was my doggie door plan overview. It was basically about a 25x25 square with the top rounded over, and pins on the top sides to act as the swinging hinges.
o Use pins to hinge on the sides. Round over the top, full round.
o assemble a cedar plate for the doggie door out of spare wood – butt up and glue
o Weather stripping around the doggie door
o F-ups were classic measuring from the wrong side of the groove / blade… be careful
o Luckily my f-ups are on the outside of my doors (ie I won’t see them when relaxing on my screened patio).
o Potential upgrades: Put a fascia board/veneer/strip on the aluminum (aesthetics only). Or paint the aluminum black.
o Useful material info: Density of cedar ~24 lb/ft^3. My doors were planned to weight about 22 lbs, but I swear they were more like 35.
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