DIY Screen Door FAIL!

I am keeping it real with you today! When you DIY as much as Ed and I do you are bound to run into a total FAILed project every once in awhile and one of these failures happened to us last summer. It was not so much a fail, but more a funny situation that we did not foresee.

We just remedied the FAIL to a WIN last night and I could not be happier!!!

It all started with this door that leads out to the garage. I like it open in the nice weather to let a cross breeze into the house.

So last summer we bought a wooden screen door. I went through the steps of removing the screening on the door so I could paint it white, then put the screen back in.

We bought all the hardware to hang it and hung the door in front of this wood door successfully. I was happy. I finally had a screen door to go with the white painted walls in my garage.

So why don’t you see it in front of the door in the photo above?

The overhead garage door track is why!

After we had the door installed successfully and swung it open for the first time, it only opened about 20 inches and stopped. At first we thought we hung it wrong, but then we realized the track that allows the garage door to raise and lower was in the way.

Good grief!… and a few expletives came out of our mouths. At first we were in shock and then we both looked at each other and laughed that we did not foresee this outcome….at all. Clueless! Neither of us had even thought about the overhead track impeding the swing of the door.

Normally when we run into a problem or a snag with a project, we can figure out a way to fix it. There was no fix for this unless we removed the garage door which was not going to happen.

So off the new, pretty, white screen door went and it has been leaning here ever since.

Fast forward to two weeks ago when I had to go to the Pella Window store to get a replacement crank for a casement window.

While I was there I asked the sales guy how much it would cost to replace sliding glass doors that we have in the kitchen and living room. (A someday in the future project.) He took me to a door display and showed me one with a retractable screen door. I loved it, but not the price tag.

As I drove home I could not get the idea of having a retractable screen on the sliders that look out to the lake, so when I got home, I went online and started researching retractable screen doors. Some were nothing but a drape made of screening material which I didn’t want.

Others were made of wood, but cost too much. Then I came upon a Brisa Retractable Screen Door at Lowes. I read through the listing and forgot all about the sliding doors… this was the answer to our garage screen door failure.

I ordered the retractable screen door and it arrived a few days later.

How to Install a Retractable Screen Door

This is not a sponsored post. This retractable screen door is ingenious and very well made, plus it is… no pun intended... a breeze to install.

The retractable screen doors come in different sizes. The size I bought will fit a door opening between 32″ – 36″ with no modifications needed.

But if you have a smaller opening, like we did, all that is needed is two simple cuts on the track sections with a hack saw.

Once we had the top and bottom tracks cut to 30″ long, we assembled the door. It consists of 5 parts that pretty much snap together.

Once the door parts are snapped together, you simply place it on the outside of the door frame and screw it into the frame with screws that come with the door.

Along the bottom track there are two grey plastic pieces (one for each side of the door frame) that you can cut with a craft knife or scissors to custom fit to your door frame.

The directions that come in the box show every step and just how easy the screen door is to install. 30 minutes later we were done.

Note: Two other modifications may need to be made depending your door frame. We didn’t need to do these. One is you may need to add a wood sill under the door frame if your sill is short and the other modification is switching the way the handle faces on the door. Both are very easy to do and are shown step-by-step in the directions.

How to Open and Close the Screen Door

To open the retractable screen door you simply press on the grey lever that is both on the inside and outside of the door. You can lock the door from the inside.

The screen is pretty much invisible so there two areas of double stripes on the mid-bottom and top of the screen so you don’t walk through it. If you look closely at the screen in the photo above you can see the stripes.

So now the cross breeze can blow in without any bugs or birds flying in along with it. Having a screen door also brightens “The Hallway of Darkness”. :-)

It only took a year, but this screen door fix is better than the original wood screen door. It costs a little more. I paid $180 for the door with free shipping. So worth it and I didn’t even have to paint it white. YAY! I am one happy retractable screen door owner!

Update: We hung this door back in 2017 and it is still working perfectly 8 years later. It is one of the best home improvement products we have added to our home.

I took the 30″ wide, white wooden screen door complete with all the parts to hang it to the thrift store.

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