Screen cleaning and rescreening in Cumming, GA
Screens do not last forever, and around Lake Lanier they age faster on the side that faces the water. That is the sunny side, and years of direct sun bake the rubber spline brittle and rot the mesh until it tears at a touch. Add a household that is in and out all summer, a dog that leans on the patio screen, and the ordinary racking that comes from pulling screens for every window cleaning, and a Cumming home ends up with a mix of torn, sagging, and popped-out screens. We fix them on the frames you already own, rescreening from $49 a screen, so the windows look right and the house breathes again.
Sun-rotted and torn screens on Lake Lanier homes
Homes around Lake Lanier take more sun on their water-facing walls than a typical inland house, and screens are the first thing to show it. The lake side is where the big glass is, the picture windows and sliders that were put in for the view, and it is also where the afternoon sun sits hour after hour through the summer. Ultraviolet is hard on screen materials. The rubber spline that pins the mesh into the frame channel dries out, shrinks, and turns brittle, and the mesh itself goes stiff and starts to tear at the lightest touch. Many Cumming homes near the water are twenty and thirty years into that exposure, so by now the lake-facing screens sag, bow out of the frame, or have already popped a corner. Screens on the shaded north side of the same house can still be fine while the sunny ones are shot, which is normal and worth knowing before anyone quotes you a whole houseful. A torn screen lets bugs into a lake home that already fights humidity and moths, a saggy one drags down the look of a wall of windows built to be looked through, and a gray one makes freshly washed glass look dirty. Almost none of it means new screens, though. The frames are usually sound. It is the mesh and the spline that gave out, and both go back onto the frame you already have.
Fresh mesh on the frame you already own, $49
Rescreening handles the large majority of screen problems, and it costs far less than folks expect. We pop the screen out of the window, peel the sun-hardened spline out of the channel, pull off the brittle or torn mesh, then stretch fresh mesh flat and even across the frame and press in new spline to lock the tension. What comes back is a tight, wrinkle-free screen with no sag and no gap, riding on the same frame that came off the window, for $49 each. We keep standard fiberglass mesh on the truck for everyday jobs, and we can go finer to hold back more pollen or heavier with a pet-resistant weave where a screen takes abuse. On the Lake Lanier homes we see, spline is usually the culprit. Sun turns it hard and shrinks it until it loses its grip, and once it does the mesh has nothing keeping it taut, which is why screens nobody ever touched still start sagging after a decade in the weather. Fresh spline alone rescues a lot of screens that looked ready for the curb. Every screen gets a price before we start, so a Cumming home with twenty of them never becomes a guessing game, and every panel we rescreen goes straight back into its window that day. Nothing gets hauled off to a shop and left sitting for a week.
Dogs, docks, and screens that take a beating
A lake house is usually a busy house, especially in summer, and the screens nearest the action wear out first. The patio and door-height screens on the lake side get the most of it, opened and shut a hundred times a day as people move between the deck, the dock, and the kitchen. A dog that wants to be part of that leans on the slider screen and eventually claws or pushes a hole clean through the thin fiberglass mesh a screen ships with. Once the weave splits it only spreads, and a flapping corner is an open door for the gnats and moths a Lake Lanier evening brings out. Standard mesh was never meant for that traffic. When we rescreen a panel a pet has gotten into, we can set a pet-resistant mesh in its place, a much tougher weave that takes claws and a leaning dog far better than the factory material. It is the identical rescreen at the identical rate, just with stronger mesh in the channel. We tend to use it on the sliding patio screens and the low windows a dog can reach, and leave the finer pollen mesh up high, where a dog never gets. You are never required to redo the whole house. We match the mesh to how each screen actually gets used, and we tell you the small price bump before we do it.
When a bent frame needs more than new mesh
Now and then the mesh is fine and the frame is the problem. A screen that rattles in a lake breeze, gaps at one corner, or will not drop into its track is usually racked out of square, not torn. Aluminum bends without much provocation. A tumble during a cleaning, a hard gust off the water, or just years of sliding a screen out and shoving it back will knock a frame out of true, and once it is out of true it grinds on the track and sill every time it moves and lets bugs in at the gaps. We straighten bent rails, square the corners back up, and replace the cracked plastic corner keys that let a frame hold its shape, so the screen seats the way it did when the house was new. When a frame is creased, corroded, or split past saving, we say so and quote a new one instead of charging to patch something that will fail again by next season. Most of this happens right at your Cumming home in one visit, no shop run required, and before we call it fixed, every screen goes back into its own window for a fit test. Get the frame right and the screen stops fighting you, sliding open on a mild evening instead of staying jammed shut while the air conditioning runs.
Screen washing at $5, and sorting what needs what
Not every screen needs fixing, and saying so is part of the job. When we pull your screens on a visit, we split them three ways: the ones that only want a wash, the ones worth new mesh at $49, and the handful too far gone for anything but a new frame. You see that breakdown, with prices, before we touch a thing, and the look costs nothing. A plain screen wash is $5 apiece on a window cleaning visit. We lift each screen out, lay it flat, and run a soft brush and a mild solution through the weave to release the pollen and lakeside grime rather than drive it deeper the way a hose does, then rinse and dry it before it goes back up. Clean screens matter more around here than people expect, because the pollen and the damp air off the lake cake the mesh gray, and that film bleeds onto the glass with the first rain. Every visit works off a $175 floor, and screen work of either kind, a wash or a rescreen, counts toward that floor right alongside the glass. The rest of the menu is simple: $8 to $12 for a standard pane, $25 for glass etched with hard water, $5 to wash a screen, and $49 to rescreen one. Put the Cumming house on a recurring visit and 5, 10, or 15 percent comes off, scaled to how often we come. Same look-first, no-upsell habit we have kept since 2009.
Screen repair and window cleaning in Cumming
Screen repair is part of our full window cleaning in Cumming. Read about our general screen repair service, or see the same service in Alpharetta and Johns Creek.
Screen repair questions from Cumming homeowners
What Forsyth County families ask before booking screen service.
Why do my lakeside screens fall apart faster than the others?
Sun, mostly. The lake-facing side of a Cumming home gets hours of direct afternoon light, and ultraviolet dries the spline brittle and rots the mesh until it tears easily. Screens on the shaded side of the same house often stay fine while the sunny ones fail, which is why we look at each one instead of assuming the whole set is done. The good news is that the frames usually survive, so a rescreen brings the sun-damaged ones right back.
How much is screen repair in Cumming?
Rescreening runs $49 a screen, mesh and new spline included, on the frame you already have. A screen that is just dirty rather than damaged gets washed for $5 as part of a window cleaning visit. Each visit has a $175 minimum that screen work counts toward, and we price every screen before starting, so a lake house full of them never becomes a shock at the end. On a standing schedule, the whole visit drops 5, 10, or 15 percent.
Can you rescreen instead of buying new screens?
Almost always. Most damage is worn spline or torn mesh, and both get replaced on the aluminum frame you already own. A rescreen gives you a flat, tight screen again for $49 apiece, with no new frame to buy. We only steer you toward a replacement frame when the aluminum is bent past straightening or the corners no longer hold, and we will tell you that plainly rather than sell a frame you do not need.
The dog tore the patio screen. Can that be fixed tougher?
Yes, and we can make it last longer than the original did. When we rescreen a patio or door screen a pet has torn, we can set a heavier pet-resistant mesh that stands up to claws and a leaning dog far better than the thin factory weave. It runs a little more than standard mesh, and you hear the difference before we do it. On a lake house with a dog that lives half outside, it is usually worth the small upgrade.
Do I have to redo every screen in the house?
No, just the ones that need it. We sort your screens into the ones to wash, the ones to rescreen, and the few better off with a new frame, and you get that with prices up front. Plenty of Cumming customers have us rescreen the three or four sun-damaged screens on the lake side and simply wash the rest. You decide from a clear list, not a pushy pitch.
Get Your Cumming Screens Fixed and Fitted Right
Sun-rotted mesh, sagging screens, or a frame that will not seat? Call (470) 333-2525 or email Alexusbestcompany@gmail.com for a free screen assessment in Cumming. Family-owned, insured, and rescreening from $49.