By Elizabeth Razzi
Sunday, August 19, 2007

Mosquitoes may be taking it on their evil little chins this summer, thanks to the drought, but you know they'll be back. And you can count on yellow jackets to fight for your Coke through the first frost. The best way to take back your back yard from them may be to erect a fine-mesh screen from porch floor to ceiling.

You can even leave that Coke out there on the screened porch, unattended, taunting the biting, stinging beasts on the other side.

If you drive through the older neighborhoods inside the Capital Beltway, you'll notice that the modest screened porch, usually to the side of the house, is an accepted element of Washington design. What's new is the degree to which homeowners now make the screened porch a full-fledged room, usable from spring through fall. People are asking contractors to build their porches, like everything else about the house, bigger and more feature-packed than ever.

Calls from potential clients asking for screened porches have increased yearly for the past five years, said Mark Richardson, president of Case Design Remodeling in Bethesda. "One out of six clients that we build a deck for comes back later and says, 'The deck is nice, but boy it would be great if we had it screened in.' "

The look they're going for these days is not the rustic lodge-style effect, but a refined space with finishes similar to those used indoors, he said. "The more it feels open and spacious, but more like a room, the more people like it."

A screened porch gives you a lot of living space for about the price of an upscale new car (or two, depending on your taste in porches and cars). Most clients spend $30,000 to $40,000, Richardson said, though getting fancy with the finishes and details could drive the cost up to $80,000 or $90,000. That type of investment also suits the in-between state of the economy right now, he said.

"When people are feeling super-confident about the economy, the stock market is good and interest rates are good, they are going to do really, really big projects," Richardson said. "When people are really, really nervous, they like to do a lot of little details or embellishments to their house. We're in a time that's in between, and porches sort of fit that in-between remodeling."

Unless you already know what you want and can find a contractor ready to get you on the schedule quickly, it will probably take several months before you can get a porch finished. If you start now you might be able to enjoy the space for the last few weeks before winter, but spring is the more likely target.

It takes one to three months to obtain building permits, get on a builder's schedule and order materials, Richardson said. Construction itself can take another one to three months, depending on complexity, he said.

Tom Andrew, an Arlington architect, is enjoying his first summer on the screened porch he designed early this year. It replaced an uncovered deck that he and his wife, Gail Markulin, had built about 10 years ago. "We used it only four times per season because of the bugs and because it was not covered," Andrew said. "Even with an umbrella it was just too hot."

They had the old deck torn down and replaced it with a 13-foot by 18-foot screened porch, which cost $45,000. (The price was boosted a bit because the porch is 1 1/2 stories above ground and is connected to the garden by stairs.) It uses tongue-and-groove pressure-treated pine for the flooring and cedar for the exterior frame. They and their two teenagers dine there almost every evening, he said. "We kind of hang out longer than we did around the dining table," he added.

There are a couple of features Andrew said he would not do without. First is the ceiling fan. "It's an absolute must. If I'm out there, it's on." Second are skylights. Although he was trying to get away from overbearing sunshine on the old deck, Andrew worried that the porch would take too much sunlight away from the adjacent dining room. He installed two skylights, each four-feet square, in the porch roof next to the wall of windows that leads to the dining room.

The choice of wood used in a screened porch has a big effect on the price. Adrian Hessen, president of Havens by Hessen, a Baltimore company that designs and builds porches, patios and other outdoor spaces, said pressure-treated lumber is the least expensive option, but it requires the most maintenance, namely cleaning and sealing every couple of years. Decking and rails made of wood-plastic composites, such as Trex, are more expensive but require little upkeep. And naturally rot-resistant woods such as cedar and ipe (pronounced ee-pay), a hardwood from the Brazilian rain forest, are more expensive, but they require little maintenance and provide a rich, warm look. (Specify in your construction contract that any rain-forest wood, such as ipe, must be certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, an international, nonprofit organization that verifies that the lumber was produced in a sustainable manner. To find suppliers, go to http://www.fscus.org.) Hessen said his company builds year-round, but that demand for screened porches peaks between mid-February and March.

Charles Hayes is a home inspector with Faro Systems of Silver Spring and a member of the American Society of Home Inspectors. He is a fan of composite materials such as Trex. "I like plastic, I'll tell ya," he said. He explained that even though pressure-treated lumber isn't subject to deterioration from direct sunshine, he doesn't think the stains and sealants needed to maintain it last as long as they used to.

Among the issues he looks for when inspecting porches is the way the ground beneath the decking is treated. It should be graded so water drains away from the space, and the dirt should be covered with landscape cloth and loose stone so water can't pool, allowing mosquitoes to breed. "A lot of times people don't put screen on the underside of the deck, so they have mosquitoes coming through the planks." Screening the bottom is not required by building codes, but, he said, "it's sort of silly not to."

But some of Hayes's advice is less nuts-and-bolts. "People sometimes do not pay enough attention to how the porches look," he said. "Sometimes I wonder, is this really what they wanted?"

You have all of this fall and winter to figure that out.

E-mail Elizabeth Razzi atrazzie@washpost.com