Here at Desert Sun Patios, we believe that there’s a reason for every season to improve your home with a screen room. A screen room is a great addition to any home as it automatically creates a whole new space for a fraction of the cost of a full room extensions, and you’ll be able to get the best of being inside and outside at the same time. It’s a quick and easy process that can be completed at any time of year, especially if you build directly on top of your deck or patio (which avoids the need to dig through frozen ground to make foundations). Many of our Calgary clients come looking for screen rooms in the early days of spring, tired of being cooped up all winter and looking for ways to get into their outdoor space. However, there’s a few who know that the best season to add a screen room is fall.
Why Build In Fall?
It may seem strange to think about starting a major house renovation such as a screen room in the fall, especially for one like a screen room that can’t be used during the cold Alberta winters. However, when you consider some of these reasons, you’ll see that fall is the season for your screen room:
- Combine garden prep with renovation – one of the biggest drawbacks of building a screen room in the spring is that your garden will get a considerable amount of damage through the construction process. Your building crew will have to get access to the back of your house, and will use your garden as a work area to trim boards and store materials. All of this will cause damage to your lawn and grass which will then expose the soil during the hot summer months. By building in fall, you can use this damage to your advantage by combining it with grass seed prep and some tilling and aeration to get your lawn looking beautiful for the following spring.
- Quicker turnaround time – you’ll find that customer volumes are much lower as summer comes to an end, but given that you can build a screen room in a matter of weeks, you can make your screen room dreams a reality in next to no time. You won’t get stuck waiting for your contractor to juggle multiple clients, and you’ll be at the front of the line for any building or planning permits.
- Keep your summer going – no one likes to head inside as summer draws to a close, but the colder evenings and windier days makes it harder to spend time on your deck or patio during fall. A screen room provides shelter from the wind (and protection from the dirt it brings is an added bonus!), and you can make your screen room cosy with enough blankets and candles to keep you “outside” till winter comes.
Add Some Hygge To Your Lifestyle
There’s a growing trend coming out of Denmark to build spaces around your home that invoke the Danish concept of “hygge” – a feeling of cosy comfort and somewhere that you return to recharge at the end of a busy work day. Your screen room offers you the perfect opportunity to incorporate hygge into your fall lifestyle with some of these finishing touches:
- A heat source – during the summer months, you’ll find that the warm Calgary summers heat and cool your screen room perfectly. However, as the cool nights of fall start to happen more frequently, you’ll benefit from adding a heat source to your screen room to keep you in the room longer into the year. A simple electric space heater is a cheap option that also provides a good amount of warmth, but for the true hygge effect, install a wood or pellet burning stove. Not only do these pump out a lot of heat, but you’ll get the flickering effect of the fire to cuddle up next to. The mesh windows in a screen also mean that you’ll be able to vent a stove more easily than with solid walls.
- Plenty of blankets – a simple way to bring some fall hygge into your sunroom is to make sure you have a ready supply of warm blankets for everyone to sit under. Make sure your blankets match the colour and textile theme of your sunroom, and you should definitely use this opportunity to bring some signature fall colours into the space. You’ll also want to think about some sort of storage for these soft furnishings, with either an ottoman footrest or hollow coffee table both giving you multiple purposes for one piece of furniture. Everyone who visits your sunroom will quickly find their favourite blanket to snuggle under, meaning that you’ll want to have plenty of options!
- A hot drinks station – when you think of cosiness and hygge, your mind immediately turns to sitting somewhere warm with a hot drink in your hand. You can bring this dream to life in your screen room by creating a dedicated hot drinks station so that everyone can make their own favourite beverage without having to leave the room. Stock it with tea bags, ground coffee and hot chocolate mixes, and of course make sure that you find the biggest mugs possible to wrap both hands around.
While spring tends to be the time that we see a lot of customers coming in to our downtown Calgary showroom to talk about their new screen room project, it’s easy to see that there’s a lot of reasons why fall is the best season to make this addition. You’ll avoid a messy garden during the key summer months, your screen room will be designed and built in a much shorter time frame, and you can bring some cosy comfort to keep that summer feeling going for longer. Make this fall the season your best season ever by calling us or coming to our showroom to get started on your fall screen room project.
