Yesterday’s story about my $14-worth-$3,000 fiberglass tubing *score* led me to this resource: Where to find those old-fashioned green, wavy plastic panels that Grandpa used for the roof on his back porch? I still see them on porches at estate sale houses, and I always think they are so homey — affordable, functional, and appropriate — and I love that green color! You can use these as panels in all sorts of applications — how about the green for the walls of an outdoor shower?
Sources that seem to offer old-fashioned fiberglass-reinforced corrugated panels — get samples! ask questions! this story is just a ‘scan’ I have not seen samples or contacted the companies for more info — in various colors and specifications:
- eplastics.com — including online sales
- Sequentia — check internet sellers for retail orders
- Dipcraft
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We have the green one on a patio on the front of our house. People walking by always look at it and I get lots of compliments on it when I’m outside. I will have to replace it this summer- it is chipped and water is leaking in, but then it is over 50 years old. I can find the exact same material here in our local hardware store.
May I ask if it’s a chain/big box hardware store or a mom and pop type store? I’ve looked for some and all I can find is flimsy stuff that’s nowhere near being like the old stuff.
I’m in Canada and have seen it at two different Canadian chain hardware stores, Rona and Home Hardware. The one I have has a texture to it and although I can still buy that one, I find debris gets caught in it, so I might so with the smooth one, even if it flimsier.
So-many ranch-style homes had porch covers made of these, held up by wrought-iron posts with scroll work. My first home, a ’52 rancher did!
still looking for vintage fiberglass half dome outdoor lighting shades for around my pool.
Fun memories!
Wow! I haven’t seen the green wavy fiberglass for ages. It used to be used for covered parking (carports) in the 1950s and 1960s. They did not work really well during the snow season up north, so many of the people in my town who had them replaced them with actual garages. But people I knew in Florida still had them.
Now, here’s an unusual use for them that I lived with once. The first house I lived in after I got married was a cottage made out of a hot dog stand that had washed out to sea during a hurricane, then washed up on shore. My landlord dragged it up on the lot next to his house and repaired and added onto it. The living room was the hot dog stand, with the windows that opened on three sides. The kitchen and two bedrooms were added, leaving the windows between them and the living room open. So he filled in the windows between the living room and bedrooms with louvered shutters, which was nice in the summer for letting the breeze through. But the two windows between the living room and the kitchen were blocked off with wavy, bright green fiberglass panels. It made decorating a bit challenging. What I ended up doing is covering the panels with curtains in the living room and with pegboard in the kitchen, which was useful for showing off my Catherineholm lotus pots and lids and other groovy midcentury stuff I used to have.
Do you know how many millons of times I’ve mused about finding these? I have this painfully plain quite large concrete deck in the back of my house that has been screaming for these for years.
I’ve been in love with them forever, our next door neighbor’s house had an open back porch made of terracotta tile, with plain metal pipes (think flagpole) holding up a peach sheets of this stuff with gold and white strands shot all through the material. Twas stunning.
I LOVE this stuff and I’ve been looking for the green version for years to replace an overhang in my back yard. I’ve only come across the same resources. I suppose it’s time to dive in and get samples.
To the commenter(s) who’ve used the eplastics or sequentia versions – can you post photos?
Sigh. When I was a child, my grandparents bought a nearly new mid-mod ranch, and enclosed the large breezeway into a very swanky screened-in entertaining space. They made a skylight with a panel of the green fiberglass, right over the top of the picnic table. A few years later, my brother had a meltdown during a meal and said he would NOT eat that green hangerburger! So Grandpa put plywood underneath the green panel and the porch never again had the same swanky ambiance. I am thrilled to know this delicious product is still around!
Home Depot has the coverings in traditional wavy green and other colors.
Not sure if they’re the same, though…
The Home Depot here carries a very slick opaque version, unfortunately not the fiberglass style I’m guessing all Hime Depots are the same stock?
Pam,
You joke about hypothetical outdoor showers enclosed in these panels…….The farm house that my family moved into in late 1982 had a basement shower that was very primitive (the only shower in the house). The floor of the shower was the cement floor and the walls were these green corrugated fiberglass sheets nailed to 2 x 4s. Needless to say we removed that “shower” after about a year living in the house!!