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4176 W Montrose Ave, Chicago, IL 60641
Mon to Fri, 9:00am to 5:00pm
There is a stretch in spring and again in fall where the yard looks beautiful and sitting in it is miserable. An outdoor room takes those weeks back. Walls, a roof, screens or glass, and a space that feels like outside without behaving like it.
A full addition means foundations, HVAC, drywall, permits that take months and a number most people do not want to hear. A deck means you are at the mercy of whatever the weather is doing. An outdoor room sits between the two, and for most homes it is the better answer.
You get a real room with a roof over it, protected from rain and wind and insects, for a fraction of what an addition costs and in a fraction of the time. Most people end up using it more than the rooms they already had. It becomes the reading room, the dinner room, the place the whole house drifts to on a Sunday.
Enclosed, screened and roofed, usable from the first warm week in April to the last decent one in November. Rain stays out, wind stays out, and the mosquitoes that own a Chicago backyard in July never get in.
This is the option most people land on once they see the numbers. You get roughly eight months of a genuinely usable room without heating, cooling, insulation or a foundation. It is built onto your existing deck or as its own structure, framed and finished to match the house so it never looks bolted on.
Glass on three sides, insulated, heated and usable in every month Chicago has. In February you are sitting in the sun with snow on the ground outside the glass. In June you open it up and it behaves like a screened porch.
A sunroom costs more than a three season room and gives you back a room the house genuinely gains. It shows up on the square footage, it shows up in the appraisal, and it gets used on the days when nothing else outside is bearable.
A porch is the piece of a Chicago house people notice from the street. Columns, ceiling, rail, floor and roofline all have to look like they belong to the building, which is exactly where most rebuilds go wrong.
We build new porches and rebuild failing ones from the framing up. On older housing stock that usually means correcting decades of patchwork first, and matching trim profiles and column proportions that nobody stocks anymore. Done properly, nobody can tell which century it was built in.
The simplest way to make an outdoor space usable, and usually the quickest. A covered, screened structure over the deck or patio you already have. Shade during the day, no insects at dusk, and the breeze still gets through.
If you already have a deck you like and the only problem is the eight o’clock mosquito shift, this is the answer. Less structure and less cost than a three season room, built in a fraction of the time, and it can be upgraded later if you decide you want it fully enclosed.
| Screen Room | Three-Season Room | Sunroom | Porch | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Usable months | May to Sept | April to Nov | All year | May to Oct |
| Insects kept out | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Rain and wind kept out | Partly | Yes | Yes | Partly |
| Heated | No | Optional | Yes | No |
| Counts as living space | No | No | Yes | No |
| Relative cost | Lowest | Middle | Highest | Middle |
| Build time | Shortest | Middle | Longest | Middle |
Most people come to us asking for one of these and leave having chosen a different one. That is what the design visit is for. We will tell you honestly which one fits how you actually plan to use it.
An outdoor room is heavier than a deck, and it puts that weight in different places. Before anything gets designed, we look at what is already there. Footings, framing, ledger connection and whether the roof line can take a tie in.
Sometimes the existing structure is fine and we build straight onto it. Sometimes the framing needs reinforcing first, and occasionally the honest answer is that the deck should be rebuilt before anything goes on top of it. We tell you which of those three you are dealing with before you spend anything.
Still unsure? Call the owner directly and ask.
Yes, for all four. Anything with a roof structure needs a permit in Chicago, and a sunroom needs more paperwork than the rest. We handle all of it including the inspections.
Often, if the framing and footings can carry the additional load. We assess the structure first and tell you plainly whether it needs reinforcing.
A screen room is screened and roofed. A three season room is fully enclosed with windows, so it also keeps out wind and driving rain, which buys you roughly two extra months either side.
It can take supplemental heat like an infrared or gas heater, which extends the season. It is not insulated for a Chicago January. If you want all twelve months, you want a sunroom.
Generally yes, because it counts as finished living space. It also carries the longest build and the highest cost of the four, so it is worth being sure about how you will use it.
A screen room is usually days rather than weeks. A three season room runs a few weeks. A sunroom is the longest. The permit typically adds more time to the schedule than the build itself.
Yes, and it is a sensible way to do it. Tell us that is the plan and we will build the structure so upgrading later means adding windows rather than starting again.
That is the point of it. We match siding, trim, roof pitch and column profiles so it reads as part of the original building rather than something attached to it.
Your request is in. We will call you within one business day to set up your free design visit.
Mon to Fri, 9:00am to 5:00pm · Chicago, Evanston, Skokie, Morton Grove, Northbrook, Wilmette
