New awning

Here is a picture of the awning that was here when we bought the house. (This picture was actually taken before we lived here.) The awning was a big piece of canvas that stretched tight over the wood frame. It was a great place to sit in the summer, but unfortunately we get really strong winds around here, and the canvas got ripped many times. It would either fly off of the frame, or stay partly on and fly around hitting things. For the past two years, we've been trying various solutions, (patching the canvas, adding velcro restraints, adding strings, taking it down when it starts to get windy, etc.) but nothing has worked--in fact, even the wood frame itself has gotten all ripped apart because the winds are so strong. So . . .

This summer we ordered a new awning, which is retractable, so we can just roll it up when the winds are strong. It was installed today, and I think it's going to be great! There's a little remote control to bring it out, and there's also a sunshade that pulls down from the front of it, to block the evening sun. Here are some pictures of Abey operating the remote control and opening the awning.

Fully retracted

Partially extended (you can stop it at any point, but I don't know why you'd want to)

Fully extended-- although the picture here doesn't quite do it justice--the support arms
actually extend straighter than they look here. It's nice to have the view unimpeded
by any vertical support arms. It makes the deck feel really big!