Full rescreen: every panel, every groove, new spline throughout.

Why the whole structure at once

Mesh does not wear out where it gets touched. It wears out where the sun reaches it, and on your cage the sun has reached all of it for the same number of years. Ultraviolet light works on the coating and then on the strand itself, and the mesh loses tensile strength gradually and uniformly across the entire structure.

So the first panel to tear is not the unlucky one. It is the first of a set that have all arrived at the same place. Replace it alone and the next one goes the following season, then two more, and you have paid three mobilizations, three lots of setup and three visits to do a job that was one job.

There is also the appearance problem, and people mind it more than they expect. New charcoal mesh against twelve-year-old charcoal mesh is visibly different: darker, tighter, cleaner at the edge. One new panel in a wall of old ones does not look repaired, it looks patched.

What actually happens on the day

Old mesh is cut out and the spline pulled. Then the part that matters: the groove is cleaned. Twelve years of vinyl leaves residue, and grit packs into the corners of the channel. New spline pressed into a dirty groove sits proud, does not seat evenly, and is exactly the panel that pulls out first in a blow.

New mesh is rolled in with fresh spline, panel by panel, tensioned so the finished bay sits flat. Over-tension is a real fault, not enthusiasm — it pulls on the frame, distorts light members and puts a permanent load on a structure engineered for wind, not for a screener leaning on a roller.

Roof panels are done from above with the deck and pool protected below. If your cage has a super gutter we clear it while we are up there, because there is no better time and standing water in a gutter is a mosquito farm with a structural bill attached.

The mesh decision is yours, with the facts

18×14 is standard insect mesh and it is what most cages are screened in. 20×20 no-see-um is a tighter weave that stops the smallest biting insects — genuinely useful near water and after rain. Pet mesh is a much heavier strand woven to survive claws.

Both of the upgrades cost you airflow. A tighter weave moves less air, so the cage feels warmer and stiller on a still day, and it presents more surface to the wind, so your frame carries more load in a storm. That is not a sales caveat, it is the physics of the thing, and it is why we will not put pet mesh on roof panels of a frame that was engineered without it.

The arrangement that usually makes sense: standard mesh across the structure, and pet mesh only on the lower wall panels beneath the chair rail, where the animal actually reaches. The chair rail gives that change of mesh a clean line to stop at, so it looks deliberate rather than mended.

Things we look at while the cage is naked

A rescreen is the only time in a decade that every part of your frame is accessible and unclad. It would be negligent not to look at the rest of it, so we do, and anything found goes on the quote as a separate line you can decline:

• Base anchors. Rust weeping onto the deck, movement under load, spalled concrete around the hole.
• Splices. Beam joints that have opened, fasteners backed out, sealant failed.
• Grooves. Channels crushed or torn to the point that they will not hold spline reliably.
• The door. Racking, hinge wear, a closer set to slam, a latch that no longer catches on its own.
• Kick plates. Dented, loose, or missing entirely on a household with a dog.