LESLIE: Alright, now we’ve got Poe calling in from Mississippi with a question about a screen door. What can we do for you?
POE: Great show, great show.
TOM: Thank you.
POE: I have a metal door with vertical and horizontal strips of metal. It was originally designed as a security door. What I want to do is to get a good summer’s breeze coming through here and I want to be able to keep the insects and mosquitoes out. So I want to put a full-length screen on this metal door and I’d like to know if there’s some kind of adhesive or glue you could recommend to hold that screen in place.
TOM: Well, typically you don’t glue a screen in place. Typically, a screen is mechanically attached with screws or something of that nature or little brackets. Now, this screen that you want to cover the door with, what you might want to do is go to a hardware store and have them assemble a screen for you in screen-framing material, which has a place for a – what’s that rubber stuff called that you push …
LESLIE: It’s like a – it’s a …
TOM: It’s like a rope.
LESLIE: … textured tubing, if you will.
TOM: Yeah, that holds the screen in place.
LESLIE: And it pushes the screen into a channel and then what you use is this like – it basically looks like a pizza cutter without a sharp edge.
TOM: Yep, mm-hmm.
LESLIE: And you use that to sort of push this rubber tubing into the channel and that secures the screen.
TOM: (overlapping voices) Stretch it.
LESLIE: And you do it on one side and then you do the opposite side. You sort of stretch it as you would a canvas.
TOM: You would have a standalone screen and then you would attach the screen to this metal door.
LESLIE: (overlapping voices) And you could just screw that on.
POE: (overlapping voices) OK. I was trying to avoid all that and just get some glue and just glue it in there. So that wouldn’t be a good idea. (Leslie chuckles)
TOM: No, you don’t want to do that because what’s going to happen the first time the screen rips and you’ve got to try to strip the glue off? No, attach it – make a standalone screen then attach that to the door and this way, you know, you can maintain it. If the screen wears out, you can simply unscrew it and replace it.
LESLIE: (overlapping voices) You can replace it.
TOM: (overlapping voices) It won’t be expensive.
LESLIE: (overlapping voices) And you can take it off in the winter and just insert the screws back into the holes so that you don’t have any sort of unattractive openings in the door if you wanted to get rid of it.
TOM: Exactly.
POE: OK, sounds good. Sure appreciate it. Thank you.
TOM: You’re welcome, Poe.
LESLIE: (overlapping voices) Oh, you’re welcome.
TOM: Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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