Mimosa Semi-Permanent Retractable Roof Gazebo

Good quality gazebo – I have purchased mimosa 4x3 portsea gazebo. Installed as per instruction. but louvers are not opening with mechanism. i have tried many bolt more tight and loose as a trial and error but no luck. Poor support ... instruction is quite poor. I got another gazebo as replacement but its not a case. Replacent was suggested from bunnings. I have just used gear mechanism rail from new lot. But to me nothing was wrong in original piece. finally i have tightened gear mechanism bolt more tightened than any other bolts and it works. all other crank mechanism screws are soft to medium tight.

Very light and flimsy structure – I purchased this gazebo because we wanted a retractable shade. To that end this product fits the bill. A single strap pulls the shade across where it latches magnetically, and the same strap is used to retract the shade. So far so good. However, ff the pull on the strap is not quite right, the shade will not travel straight and will jam. Something to get used to I guess.

Putting the gazebo together was something of a challenge and demonstrated that the assembly instructions were not sufficiently detailed. It would be good to know the support post spacing before hand so they could be positioned and secured, even temporarily. Unless the surface is exactly right, the posts will not stand on their own so either some form of bracing is required or this job requires more than two people. No mention of that anywhere.

Attaching the top beams was not too difficult, there is sufficient clearance for the fastenings, however the captive nuts in the posts can come loose quite easily, I had barely hand tightened several fasteners when the nuts came loose. not good.

Fitting the shade would be easier with some indication of which was the top, bottom, front and back. To further complicate matters, the pull strap, which is attached before the shade, was on the trailing edge of the first runner, not the leading edge. This meant that it was actually on top of the shade rather than in front of it.

All in all it took about 6 man-hours to complete with a lot of frustration in the process.

The finished result looks ok but is somewhat flimsy and would benefit from diagonal bracing for the posts and top beams. As to how long it lasts, only time will tell.

On a positive note, given some of the quotes we received for professionally installed shade, $549 for a retractable shade is a bargain but, as the saying goes, you get what you pay for.