Looks amazing. I love the clear plexiglass.
We were looking for an awning that would not look that an old person lived inside, and we found it! Overstock even had the best price for this awning. We bought this on the same evening we first saw it online, and I still love it.
The box arrived with two big holes pushed through it. It was so bad, that the delivery man stayed to see if we wanted to keep it, or return it. We kept it. The plexiglass had plastic film on both sides of it for shipping. Although, the plastic film was badly scuffed up, the plexiglass underneath was crystal clear, well made and thick.
The dimensions online were different from site to site. Our awning measures 6 feet 9 inches (81") long, 3 feet across, and 7 to 8 inches from the top of the awning to the bottom.
Installing it took my husband two afternoons to do. It would have been nice to have had a paper template to tape onto the house to show where to drill the holes. It didn't. Just pictures to look at, and no written words either. Ugg.
The first day, it took a lot of time to drill the ten holes (for the brackets) and another 6 to 8 holes (to hold down the plexiglass) in our brick house, level and the right distance from each other. We didn't have a hammer drill, so my husband used a carbide tip drill bit in his corded drill. It worked, but it was very slow going. Everything, was drilled perfectly except for one hole, which was pretty close. He pulled out the plastic screw anchor, made the hole bigger, put in another anchor, and it worked. Then he installed the heavy brackets and the circle tube on the front. Then he made a jig out of 2 X 4's and carpet to hold the plexiglass at the right height for the next day.
The next day, all we had to do was slide in the plexiglass. We could not install it like the manual showed us how to because our roof was just about 10 inches higher than the awning brackets. And how do you screw in the metal bracket above the door to hold the plexiglass in place, when the plexiglass is there? You would have to have scaffolding to be able to lean over the 3 feet of the awning to screw in the 6 to 8 screws into the house. Well, my teenage son guided the plexiglass into the two channels, I held the 2 X 4 jig in the middle, and my husband pushed the plexiglass from behind. Because the jig curved the plexiglass, I think, it actually slid in, in about 3 to 5 minutes, with the pulling and the pushing. Much faster than I thought it would, and we didn't even know if it would work at all. Word of warning, the plexiglass did scratch some sliding it in. Probably, because the carpet that we used was not thick or clean enough. I do not notice the small scratches. I just look at the tree leaves and the sky. All we had to do then was to screw in the end caps on the rounded edge, tighten the wall brackets, and push in the black gaskets. It was done!
Well, luckily, it rained hard the next day. The awning is under an L corner of the roof. We used to get soaking wet under that corner to go into and out of our house. Now, our heads didn't get wet, but our shoes did. The rounded edge of the awning, when it is raining hard, circles the rain under the edge and onto the back step at least a foot. The rain came down so much so that the splash-back hit the step and jumped up onto the bottom of our glass storm door. That was not what we expected. My husband fixed it by buying a metal L shaped bar (that is the same color as the awning) at a home improvement store and installed it under the black plexiglass gasket. Now, the rain runs left and right, and not over the curve and down. We are worried that the black gasket will dry out because it is now about 50% more on the outside of the metal, instead of tucked 95% under.
We have had it installed for over a month, and it has rained, and I still love it. I hope it does well in snow. The brackets feel strong enough to handle snow weight, but time will tell. It looks great, and I like that it is clear because it lets the sunlight come through my back door, and therefore into my kitchen.
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