The Dale C. Maley Family Web Site

Two of Fairbury's public parks are North Park and Marsh Park.

One of the most popular attractions at North Park is the screened-in pavilion.  Groups book it all summer for family reunions and other social events.

In the Summer of 2017, we are renovating the older Marsh Park. We decided to screen in the existing 1957 North Pavilion, similar to how North Park's building is done.

I had to figure out how to frame in the old structure, built back in 1957. After reviewing North Park's design, and the existing Marsh Park building design, I came up with the concept shown below.  Architecturally, the North Park design is not very pleasing to the eye (for example there is no trim around the screened in windows, etc).

The City maintenance supervisor requested that I raise the plate for the walls 1/2" above the concrete, to allow water to drain from the building.  The easiest way I could think of to raise it, was to use 1/2x2x4 inch aluminum bar.  I bought the aluminum bar in 48 inch lengths from McMaster-carr.  I used my dad's refurbished hack saw to saw them into 4 inch chunks.  I had a local volunteer operate the old saw for about 5 hours to make 32 of the saw cuts required.

We used hardware cloth, or large 1/4" mesh screen behind the baseboard to keep the mice out of the building.

I wanted to use plywood sheeting with a 1/2" thickness, that had the decorative vertical grooves. My local lumberyard could only get 5/8" material at a cost of over $50 per sheet.  I searched the big box stores, and found that Lowes had 19/32" thick sheeting for only $26 per sheet.  I ended up using about 70 sheets, and I had to get it from the Lowes store in Bloomington and East Peoria, Illinois.

This pavilion has an overhang on the roof, so the sheeting is protected from direct rain fall.  We primed and gave it 2 coats of good quality paint, so I am hoping it will last many years.  The bottoms of the plywood sheets also do not contact the concrete floor (due to the plate being raised 1/2" for drainage), so this should reduce the migration of moisture from the concrete to the plywood.

The siding I used is also known as T1-11 wood siding. It was very popular on new houses in the 1960's and 1970's......but faded in popularity as other siding materials were introduced. It is still widely used to build sheds and small structures.

With my brother's help, we framed and sheeted the entire 64x 20 foot building in less than 14 calendar days.  Below are photos of the framing and sheeting.

This screened-in pavilion will have 3 sets of steel doors.  Two man-doors and one double door........all 36 inches wide.  With steel doors, you are supposed to get the door first, then build the walls around the steel door frame. In my case, I had to special order steel doors with an 80" high rough-in dimension...........where the standard height is around 83".  I needed the shorter doors because my building is not tall enough for the higher standard doors.  They took 6 weeks to get the doors.  

I decided to frame up 1 side of the wood frame, then leave the other side of the wall open. Once the steel doors arrived, I would place the steel frame against the one side and lag bolt it to that side.  Then, I would build the wall out to the steel frame on the other side.  This method worked well.

The bad news about using wood siding, is that is all needs primed and then 2 coats of finish paint.  Since this was a community volunteer project, all the painters were volunteers.  We painted most of the building in just 2 days, with about 6 painters working each day.

This was an interesting project. It was a challenge to figure out how to frame up and screen in a building that was built back in 1957.  I was lucky to have many volunteers who helped me frame up and paint the building.