If the inside of your home makes visitors believe that a member of your family is raising houseflies for a living, it's probably time to inspect your screens.

A gap between the frame of the window and the frame of the screen is harder to detect than a hole or a tear in the screen material. Be sure to check the connection between the two from both the inside and the outside of your house.

With aluminum-window screen frames, in most cases, all you have to do to close a gap is perform some minor "reforming" straightening the frame by bending. Be gentle. Overdoing it can make matters worse.

More common is dealing with rips and tears. In the old days screen material was made of steel, later aluminum and eventually fiberglass.

We like fiberglass mesh. Although it isn't as strong as steel or aluminum, it is far less expensive and doesn't rust. It eventually becomes brittle as do all screen materials but it looks good right up until the day it disintegrates. That takes about 15 to 20 years, depending on how much sun it is exposed to. If you have kids, it doesn't make any difference which material you screen with. They'll probably get through all of it sooner than later.

Rescreening is quite easy with fiberglass mesh. it takes only about thirty minutes to repair a hole or tear.

First, lay the screen on a flat work surface so that the screen spline (rubber beading) is face up. Use an ice pick, a small-bladed screwdriver or an awl to pry the rubber spline out of the retainer groove. Pliers will help get the process started. Once enough of the spline is removed, grab a couple of loops and pull it out the rest of the way with your hand.

Once the old spline has been removed the screen mesh will pull right out. There should be no resistance. At this point the empty frame can be cleaned or used as a pattern to make a new frame.

With the old frame cleaned and back onto the work surface, it's time to install the new mesh. First, cut the screen material so that it is a few inches wider and a few inches longer than the overall dimensions of the frame. Straight cuts are not important at all.

Next, lay the cut material over the frame.

Insert the end of a new piece of spline don't try to reuse the old one into any corner of the frame. Press it into place at the corner with a screwdriver blade.

The next process requires you to use both hands at once. You will have to hold the new spline material over the groove in the frame with one hand and roll the spline into the groove with a spline installation tool which looks like a pizza cutter with the other. A spline cutter doesn't have a sharp edge. The surface that bears against the screen bead is concave. Its shape helps it glide over the beading material, forcing it into the groove. If you exert just a modest amount of pressure on the tool, it pretty much will do the job for you.

You don't need to pull, drag or stretch the screen to get this process to work. Just push the screen bead into place with the tool. Within a couple of minutes after you begin installing the bead, your job will be done.

Finally, with the bead embedded into the track completely around the screen, cut off the end and push it into place. Then use a razor knife to trim the excess screen. Be careful with this tool it can cut to the bone.

If you don't have screens, you have two options:

Call your local glass company. They can make custom screens in an afternoon. Or, if you are handy, go to your local home improvement center and pick up some screen, screen bead, screen frame material and three tools a razor knife, a spline tool and a small hacksaw. You will also need some way of guiding your saw so you can make 45-degree miter cuts in the frame material. The guide can be created with pencil lines on the work surface that you'll use to cut the frame.

Use the old frame as the guide to cut straight, new frame pieces. If the old corner fasteners can't be reused, new ones are available at the same store that carries frame material.