A Guide To The Best of Southern California : AT HOME : Back to Screens

TEN YEARS AGO, carpenter Ciro C. Coppa needed wooden screen doors. He couldn’t find them. “I started making them for remodeling jobs,” he says, “because putting an aluminum screen door on a woodsy house wasn’t right--a wood screen door just fits these houses. And then friends and neighbors started asking me to do it for them. I made up the screen designs in my head to go along with the design of the house.”

The old-style doors were a hit; Coppa now employs 15 workers at his San Pedro shop and turns out about 10,000 screen doors a year. Standard-size doors, which come in styles ranging from 3/4-length oval screens to split-panels with decorative etching, cost from $34 to $70 for 3/4-inch-thick sugar pine versions, $95 to $140 for 3/4-inch solid oak (custom sizes cost $15 extra). Thicker doors are available, as are double-door kits.

The shop also produces pine window screens for older houses (prices range from $10 to $60). Screen orders provide some of the more interesting requests for custom work, Coppa says. One example: “A guy with a Victorian mansion wanted a second-story window screen that was 6-feet wide and 8-feet tall with an arched top. You needed a pilot’s license to measure it. I like to take on unusual requests like that. I love the challenge.”

Coppa Woodworking offers its screen doors and window screens through window and door stores throughout Southern California, as well as in its shop. “Actually, there’s no showroom to speak of,” Coppa says. “We’re more interested in the woodworking. This is bare bones; we try to keep prices reasonable.”

Coppa Woodworking, 1231 Paraiso Ave., San Pedro, (213) 548-4142.