Pergolas in West End, OH

West End (ZIP 45203) has tight properties where the deck is the family room for half the year. A pergola over one is where the household spends summer evenings, including the ones with a game on. A screen fixed to the frame belongs in the design from the first drawing.

What that gives the household is an outdoor room that still works after dinner. The cover puts shaded seating under it, the screen sits in the darkest part of that cover, and nothing gets carried out and back indoors. The frame holds the screen, the power and the cable, so the deck reads as a room and not as a setup.

Glare decides which way the screen points. An outdoor screen is up against daylight, and most of what washes it out arrives from behind the viewer. Open sky, a low sun, a bright wall caught in the glass. So the screen faces away from the west, with the seating backed by the cover or a solid panel. It sits under the deepest part of the frame, where the rafters, the timbers across the top, keep direct light off the face.

The screen itself is built for outdoors, or it lives in a weatherproof box. An outdoor model handles damp and temperature swings and has a brighter panel. An ordinary screen inside a vented weatherproof box is the other good route. The mount fixes to solid wood set into a post or the beam while the frame goes up, on a piece stiff enough to keep the picture steady. An electrician brings a weatherproof outlet to that spot, and a conduit runs up through the post so the cable travels out of sight.