DIY slat screen

Exterior home improvements can be costly and time consuming, but here's how the big house transformed their front porch from blah to blow-me-away with a simple DIY slat screen.

 

 

You only have to take a look at the before and after images above to see what an improvement the slatted screen has made to the front of the house. Although still in the early stages of renovation, simply adding the slat screen has made a big difference to the overall curb appeal.

Although the original support posts were installed on the porch, you can easily add support beams using PAR pine available from your local Builders Warehouse.

See below how the support beams are designed.

Once we got a little assembly line setup to install the slats they all went up pretty quickly. We chopped each piece to fit and used spacing blocks and drilling templates to keep them all uniform.

Here is a close-up of the interior structural beam.

We had to cover up the nasty (uneven) steel plate supporting the posts with a little bit of moulding. The wood post couldn’t sit evenly on the ground and has a bit of breathing room at the base, so the compromise was to wrap it with some moulding at each end.

Now we need some chairs or plants or something to jazz up our new shady porch. The living room is so much cooler without the late afternoon sun beating straight into it, plus we get a bit of privacy and the house has some actual architectural interest from the curb. Win, win, win.