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It’s Gettin Hot In Hur, So Add Some Bamboo Blinds
I am, getting so hot, I’m gonna put some blinds uuup.
Picture me singing that while installing each of these four blinds. On repeat. While John rolled his eyes.
Actually it was less about heat and more about that ever-elusive p word: privacy. Just during the day (we don’t use the sunroom at night) but it’s hard to make a room with an entire wall of windows feel private and cozy. So we reasoned that bamboo blinds + the fence that we added outside for our patio (which you can see through the windows here thanks to this photography trick from Kate) just might do the trick.
We opted to go with the same bamboo blinds that we got from Home Depot for the office (they’re called Mirada if that helps anyone find them). This time we needed four 30″ bamboo blinds (which were $19 per shade) but they didn’t sell them in the store, so we ordered them online (yay for free shipping).
Once they showed up, it was on. Cue me singing and drilling until these babies were up (using the same hanging-method that we detailed here). And just like that, our sunroom was hot. Not temperature wise, attractive wise. I mean come on, if you were a sunroom looking for love, wouldn’t you want to get to know our sunroom? She’s PHAT (pretty hot and tempting).
Aaaaand now that I’ve successfully managed to out-nerd my dad (didn’t think I could and then my fingers just went rogue) I’ll just share the other after pics:
The cool thing is that the blinds + the patio fence do sort of “meet in the middle” to provide some privacy from the house next door (the fence blocks the bottom 2/3 of the window from view, and the blinds handle the top 1/3). Daytime privacy goal: achieved.
Not to mention that we love the texture and the warm tones that they bring into to the room. They balance other wood items, like the side table…
… and the wooden doily stretcher on the wall (a $4 thrift store score)…
…along with the homemade bike print frames on the other side of the room…
Hubba hubba.
In short, this was the view of the room from the sliding door in the living room before:
And now it looks like this:
And a crazy chopped-up room that looked like this when we moved in…
… now looks like this.
I’m itching to paint the dainty legs of that round table next to the egg chair a nice dark tone. Maybe chocolate or charcoal? I think it’ll set off the granite top just right. And see that orange strip of wood under the sliding door? Gotta go white with that to match the trim.
Is any window-rectifying-action going on in your house? Let’s talk about blinds bay-bee, let’s talk about you and me…
The Guest Bathroom: It’s On
Surprise! We painted the guest bathroom this weekend! The walls, the trim, and even the ceiling. And double surprise: we went with a fresh clean coat of white (Decorator’s White by Benjamin Moore). Bet you didn’t see that coming…
Why’d we go white? Well the old paint was dingy (see the difference in the pic above?), but we’ve decided to embrace the yellow tile instead of yanking it all out gut-job style or painting or reglazing it. It’s completely original 60′s tile that’s in great shape – and the color is happy and cute so we’ve decided it’s charming. Especially with our fresh white (albeit bare for now) walls – which will allow us to bring in some personality and color in other ways without overwhelming the small space.
Our hall bathroom sports original tile as well, but we were able to crisp it up and bring in some fun accessories so it flows with the rest of our house…
… so we decided to give that the ol’ college try in here before bringing in the demolition hammer, a la this…
Oh and we raised the shower rod to ceiling height and added an extra long 95″ waffle weave curtain (from target.com) about six months ago that hides inside the shower now (this is the view from inside the shower, so the rod is 100% invisible from the main part of the bathroom). It was weird to see the lower bar hanging down around 4″ below the doorway that leads to the shower.
I wish I could have shot a better picture of the other side of the shower doorway so you could get a better idea, but the room’s just too tiny. I’d have to be out the window to get the right angle…
Speaking of the window, we finally frosted it (using leftover frosting film and this method) which is nice because it lets in all the light, but doesn’t let anyone standing on the deck creepily spy on you.
Between the freshly painted walls and the glowing frosted windows, it’s definitely feeling crisper and less murky in here already.
After my little frost-job I dug out this fabric remnant from over a year ago (originally from U-Fab here in Richmond and made by Iman) to make a sweet little no-sew shade. After nixing a faux roman shade like this one I made for the kitchen (not enough fabric) and considering a simpler version like this one from the hall bath, I decided to go with something closer to the latter, but with a twist. So I dragged out my materials (a tape measure, some iron-on hem tape, a scrap piece of wood, and my staple gun) and got to work…
I measured the window width (23″), cut my scrap wood about a 1/4″ shy of that size, and cut my fabric to 25″ wide and as long as I could make it (which ended up being 30″) so I could hem it on both sides and at the bottom to end up with a 23″ x 29″ shade. See how the wood is a smidge thinner than the hemmed fabric? That’s so you don’t see it poking out on the sides.
Then I stapled the top of the fabric to the scrap piece of wood (centering the wood so the fabric was slightly longer on both sides) and screwed through it from below three times to hold it into the window.
Voila!
I opted for a cute little rolled look at the bottom thanks to a smaller piece of scrap wood (old shoe molding) that I cut to be a teeny bit wider than 23″ – that way I could roll the fabric around the molding and shove it into place so it held itself between the sides of the window, sort of like a tension rod.
Here’s the view from out in the guest room. I love how the fabric works with the polka dot curtains in there. Not too matchy, but compatible and layered. It’s also nice to see the dark teal color from the bedroom walls carried into the bathroom, so it feels less like a random yellow box without any relation to the adjoining room.
It feels good to cross a few things off the list in there, but there’s still more on the agenda.
We think three more simple upgrades will make all the difference, so here’s the plan.
paint the wallsfrost the window for privacymake a window treatment with a bold fabric remnant- paint the frame of the mirror so it stands out against the white wall
- hang some art over the toilet
- go accessory happy (if Lesley made her pink tiled bathroom cute with the right stuff, there’s hope for this old room yet)
Is anyone else embracing something old? Any painting going on? Shade-making? Did anyone else watch the Atlanta Housewives reunion and laugh at how many times they said “throwing shade”? I gotta start working that in.
Psst- See how we upgraded the light fixture almost two years ago here.
Heard It Through The Giant Non-Grape Vine
Ok, so remember the ol’ crazyvine that was putting the squeeze on an oak tree in our backyard that we mentioned last fall? It’s a scene straight outta Jumanji.
About half a year ago we cut the base of the vine…
… in an attempt to kill it and rescue our oak tree from its death grip.
And then it just sat there, a la Rose in Titanic. It never let go. And things took a turn for the ugly when the leaves and branches got all dry and dead.
So after 6 months of waiting for it to give up the ghost and magically fall from the tree, we decided that we’d need to take matters into our own hands… with the help of some pruning shears. Basically our method was to clip each dead branch off right at the base where it met the vine since we couldn’t wrestle the vine itself from the tree (it was literally as firm as cement on there, and we didn’t want to damage the oak).
Miraculously we could reach almost every last branch thanks to a ladder and a long handled branch cutter for those upper portions.
Here’s a before shot for ya from last year:
And an after that I just snapped this morning:
It’s nice to no longer have what appears to be a tree that’s eating the house.
One more before:
And an after from that angle now:
I love that there’s not a giant vine weighting down the oak anymore, and the new openness of the upper patio is awesome. It used to feel pretty closed in – and so many berries and pointy leaves (both of which the vine produced en mass) used to fall all over the table and chairs. It’s nice to be free of that dusting o’ junk.
So that’s how you ignore a vine for a few years, then attack the base, then wait for it to surrender and fall to the ground by some vine-miracle, and then make things happen with some shears and a ladder. Any pruning or yard stuff going on in your neck of the woods?
