Wooden Screen Doors for Dummies

Removing screen molding from a wooden screen door

Perhaps the surest sign that one of our candidates for DotD is unfamiliar with his or her topic is a utter and complete failure to understand the process or the problem. For example, if you ask someone how to throw a curve ball and he starts talking about quarterbacks and spirals, you know you've asked the wrong person! Freelancers who get it completely wrong while trying to pick up extra cash are a pox on the internet, and eHow's Emily Patterson proved our point when she posted "How to Rescreen a Wooden Screen Door" at HomeSteady.com.

Apparently Patterson never bothered to look at a wooden screen door before posting her instructions. If she had, she would have noticed that... well, that her instructions were rarely possible to follow for this particular DIY task. Emily's introduction...

"The screen in a wooden screen door can be pushed out over time from use. It can also rip from sharp objects and need to be replaced. Holes and loose edges allow bugs, such as flies and mosquitoes, to fly into the house and annoy people and potentially transmit disease. You can rescreen a wooden screen door in less time and for a lot less money than hiring a contractor to do this easy home maintenance project."

...notwithstanding, most wooden screen doors cannot be repaired by "[Using] a small screwdriver to pry the end of the spline, which looks like a narrow rubber gasket, out of the groove. Gently [pulling] the entire spline out of the groove and [pulling] off the old screen." You see, those are the instructions for a metal-framed screen: the screen of a wooden screen door is secured with a spline! Instead, the screen is nailed or stapled to the door frame and the unsightly fasteners are covered by screen molding. So in order to rescreen a wooden screen door (as opposed to aluminum), you remove the molding, pull off the old screen, staple replacement in place, and reinstall the molding. There are some tricks involved to get a tight screen, but there is almost never a spline -- and in the rare cases that there is, you still have to pull off a screen molding...

Patterson blew it, pure and simple: she googled "rescreen a door" and got instructions for a metal storm door (which ain't the same thing). Because she was ignorant of her topic, she faithfully reproduced the instructions (copied, reworded, pasted) she found for "Replacing a Window Screen"; except they weren't on point, and our Dumbass of the Day didn't know any better...

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