How to extend wooden privacy screens?

[helpplease83]

  

A bit of a strange one! 

I have these two timber privacy screens. They are both lovely, and so I don’t want to get rid of them - but neither is currently tall enough by about 20-30 cm. 

Is there any easy way to add height to the bottom of the screens?

Thank you. 

[MitchellMc]

Hi @helpplease83,

My first thought would be to graft on new sections of timber to extend the legs as per the image below. Dowels can be used to strengthen the joint. Concertina screens are already not particularly rigid, so extending their height would only add to their instability.

I wonder if you could use a couple of garden planter troughs and screw the screen into the back of them a the correct height. You could then plant out the trough. However, you need to be careful not to create ledges where children can use them to climb over the balcony railing.

Another option could be replacing these screens with something of a suitable height and then using them elsewhere. We have quite a few to select from in our range.

Let me tag @Nailbag, @Noyade and @Dave-1 to see if they have any thoughts.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Mitchell

[Dave-1]

Good morning @helpplease83 

Now that is an outside the box question for sure  

My thoughts went straight to attaching the panels to a box to raise the height also.

You say "two screens" Are there two seperate screens with 2 panels to a screen? The reason i ask is if we extend the base (or top) legs with another piece of timber on the side, the folding action may become jammed when the hinges are laid flat. At the moment when you flat pack it all they will sit, if I went with extending the legs by screwing something to the side then the hinges will catch the extended piece of timber potentially. @MitchellMc's way would stop that happening but also would be a weaker point.

If the panels are only 2 wide then you can extend it on the none close edge without a worry (other then astheticly) Will wait and see how many panels are on the screen.

Dave

[Nailbag]

Hi @helpplease83 

They are so decorative that they would definietly need to be raised from the bottom, which @MitchellMc has provided a great solution.

Another possible one would be to cut out a notch in the bottom of the legs and use dark stained DAR pine to extend them. These would be glued and fasted screws or nuts and bolts.

Nailbag