I really enjoy hanging out in my garage. Sometimes I am tinkering on the bikes, sometimes I am working on DIY projects, sometimes I am working at cleaning up and organizing things (a constant struggle), sometimes I am just tinkering on whatever, and sometimes I am just hanging out having a cigar, drinking a cold beverage, and watching TV. On a warm Spring or Summer evening, with the door open and the fans on, the garage is typically a few degrees cooler than it is outside (at least it feels that way). It is on these same evenings the bugs do their best to try and carry me out of there.

I started looking around on Amazon for a screen I could put up in the garage door opening to help keep the bugs out while the door is open. I picked up this Door Screen for a one Car Garage- Heavy Duty Weighted Garage Enclosure Curtain by Pure Garden.

This garage screen was less than $35 so I figured it was worth trying. The one I purchased is for a single car garage, but they are also available to fit a two car garage like this one. The screen curtain seems to be well made (it’s pretty heavy duty, I don’t think it will be easy to tear) and comes with what you need to mount to the garage door opening: screws, hook and loop strips for attaching the top, and some adhesive hook and loop squares for the sides. The screen has hook and loop attachments across the top and along the sides, it is weighted at the bottom, and has a magnet in the center to keep it closed. The instructions were not very detailed, but it was easy enough to figure out. I did not install it exactly as the instruction described anyway.

I picked up a 2″ x 3/4″ piece of exterior PVC trim from Lowe’s to use kind of as a fascia board at the top of my garage door opening to mount the hook and loop strips for the top of the screen curtain. I attached the hook and loop strips to the PVC trim with some 1/2″ screws and then attached the PVC trim to the top of the garage door trim. This should, for the most part, hide the hook and loop strips when the screen is not on the garage.

Attached the top of the screen curtain to the hook and loop strips on the back side of my fascia board. Then I folded in the sides in and attached them to three adhesive hook and loop squares on each side; one at the top, one in the middle, and one on the bottom.

Lots of reviewers mentioned the fact that it only had a single magnet in the middle, this is true but it appears to hang closed just fine – I’ll see how it goes to see if need to modify it by adding a couple more magnets.

Yeah there is a small gap across the bottom. I’ll mess the the top attachment to see if I can close that some but it should better than having a 9′ x 8′ opening. It should help keep out at least some (hopefully most) of the flying biting bugs.

I think I should be able to pull the screen back enough to get bikes in and out without having to take it down. Even if I do have to take the screen down, it is pretty easy since it is just attached with hook and loop.

The way I mounted it I can leave it up with the garage door closed.

This little project came in right around $50 for the garage screen and the strip of PVC trim. Looks pretty good, seems like it will hold up… hopefully it will reduce the amount of bugs which feast on me in the garage 🙂