Our house has 4 bathrooms, but the master bath was the only one anyone ever felt comfortable using.  The powder room on the main floor has a window directly in front of the toilet that’s also right next to the front door and the curtains the previous owners had up didn’t do much for privacy.  The bathroom that’s connected to the laundry room on the second floor (the one that’s supposed to be used by the occupants of the non-master bedrooms) had a door that locked, but wouldn’t latch and always stayed a little bit open.  And the bathroom on the third floor is located in a dormer with a floor-to-ceiling window right next to the toilet and nothing more than a see-through lacy shade to provide privacy.

Since we moved in to the house, we’ve slowly been making progress on making the bathrooms a little more usable.  We started by hanging a wooden blind in the main floor powder room that’s shut most of the time to provide privacy and last week, we hung a similar blind in the third floor bathroom.  A couple of days ago, we also decided to tackle the project of fixing the door to the laundry room bathroom so that it will successfully close and latch.

We figured out that the problem preventing the door from latching to start with was that the bolt was hitting the strike plate about an eighth of an inch too low.  To fix it, we unscrewed the bottom hinge for the door, placed some plastic spacers behind the hinge to build it out from the door frame a little and then screwed the hinge back in place.  It took us a couple tries to get the right thickness of spacers behind the bottom hinge, but we were eventually able to build it out so that the door was raised enough to be at the right position for latching.  We then scraped some of the excess paint off of the strike plate (the previous owner painted everything and there were big runs of dried paint that made it so that the door had to be pulled closed with some force for it to actually latch) and we now have a working door again!

The spacers we used were plastic strips that had come with some of the blinds we hung up earlier this week.  They did the job just fine, but we’ve also used cardboard in the past and it almost seems easier to work with because you don’t have to pre-drill the holes for the screws.  The screws in the bottom hinge were a little short to start with and, now that we’ve built it out with spacers, even less of them is actually holding the door to the frame, so I think we’ll pick up some longer ones the next time we’re out, but, for now, I’m so excited to have a bathroom door that shuts, latches, and locks!

I’d like to update the hardware on the kitchen cabinets to something that doesn’t stand out quite as much as what we have now.  I think I’d like to do something with an antiqued finish since it seems like it would fit better with the rest of our house than something real shiny or modern, but I was surprised at the lack of options at the hardware stores.  It seems like most of the ones with an antiqued finish also have some unusual shape or theme to them … or they’re just too rustic.  I found a couple last weekend that I liked, though, so I brought them home to see what would work best and I also tried just taking the back plate off of our existing hardware to see what that would look like.  Here’s a photo of all of the options:

The handle on the right door is how all of them are now, with a shiny handle and back plate.  The right drawer is the same handle without the backplate.  The ones on the left are the new ones I bought to see how they’d look.  I think I’m leaning toward the one on the left drawer the because it updates the finish to something that blends in a little more, but is still big enough to cover most of the area on the cabinets that’s discolored because it was covered by the back plate.  It seems like the discoloration starts to fade after a while, so I’m not real worried about it, but I don’t really like how the narrower one on the left door shows so much of the discoloration now.  I do like the current handle without the backplate a lot better than with it, but I think I prefer the darker finish after seeing it against the cabinets.

When we installed the new binds in the kitchen a couple of weeks ago, we had to take down the old curtain rod that had been there so there would be room to mount the shades.  The old curtain rod was one of the standard white metal ones that was too small for the rod pocket of the valance I’d hung there and I’d been thinking about getting something different anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal that it had to come down.

After we started looking at our options for decorative rods, though, we quickly realized that there weren’t many options with small enough finials on the ends to fit between the end of the window and the corner of the room.  The only rod we found that was long enough for the window, had small enough ends to fit past the corner, and had brackets with enough clearance for the shades was this Allen + Roth “sheer rod set” at Lowe’s.  I saw it online first and was pretty excited to also find it at our local store, so I bought a curtain rod and a couple sets of the clip rings in the iron bronze finish last weekend.

When I got the curtain rod home and started unpacking it to hang it on the wall, I was pretty disappointed in the quality.  The finish flaked off of one of the mounting brackets as I was unpacking it.  We decided it wasn’t worth the hassle of exchanging it, so we went ahead and mounted it with the now shiny silver side facing up where we figured no one would ever see it.  We also figured out pretty quickly that the finish scratches off of the rod really easily just during the process of getting it hung because you have to slide the entire length of the rod through the mounting brackets and the brackets are rough enough on the inside where the set screws go to take the finish off.  If we had it to do again, I think putting a piece of tape on the inside of the brackets before sliding the curtain rod through would have made a big difference.

Once we had the curtain rod installed, I hung the valance from the clip rings (which the finish was also flaking off of), but had terrible luck adjusting it so that it didn’t look like a short shower curtain hanging above the kitchen windows.  Today I finally decided the rings had to go and took the whole thing down again to get the rings off and hang the curtain directly on the rod instead.  Because the mounting brackets are solid circles around the poles, I wound up having to cut holes in the rod pocket of the valance to accommodate the mounting brackets, but once I got it all positioned right on the rod again, I think it looks a lot better.  I’m not sure if I didn’t spend enough time on it or didn’t have enough clips or what, but I wasn’t able to get it to look anything like any of the pictures I’ve seen that I thought looked good … or even as good as what you see on the home shows on tv.  What a disappointment!

I think next time we’re in the market for a new curtain rod, we’ll be trying a different brand, but at least we have curtains up in the kitchen again … and it’s nice to not see the tops of the shades anymore …

Slowly, but surely, we’re covering up our bare windows at least enough that the neighbors can’t watch everything we do at night.  Over the last few days, we finally got around to installing the blinds I ordered several weeks ago for the laundry room and the bathroom on the third floor.  It’s so nice to feel like we have a little privacy now!

For the laundry room, I ordered custom Levolor Mark I Cordless aluminum blinds to match the ones we have in the other bedroom that faces the front of the house.  They went up without too much difficulty, but the mounting brackets are one of the trickiest designs I’ve ever seen.  I think we may have problems when it comes time to take them down.  They’re spring loaded and the blind is hung by clipping the front of the head rail on to the bracket and then pushing back to compress the spring enough that the back of the head rail can clip on.  We learned the hard way with a couple of the blinds in the other bedroom, though, that if you don’t push just right to release the blind when taking it down, the front of the headrail can become clipped in the wrong place making it about impossible to get down.  I’m not sure what the reason is for this design - we’ve ordered other shades from Levolor in the past and they’ve come with much more normal, easy to operate mounting brackets.  Hopefully, though, we won’t have any reason to take the shades down in the near future.  Besides the awkward brackets, though, I like the shades a lot.  They stack pretty small at the top of the window and could easily hide behind curtains (if we ever put any up) and they provide some much needed privacy for the bathroom/shower that’s connected to the laundry room … although I’m sure our neighbors will miss watching us walk around in towels in the morning.

For the bathroom on the third floor, I ordered a Natural Basswood blind (in white) from JCPenney.  The bathroom is tucked into one of the dormers and it’s a rather awkward space to start with.  To be able to fit the plumbing in for a toilet, it sits on a small step and the window is nearly floor to ceiling.  To make it worse, the shade that was there before (I forgot to take a picture before we took it down) was a pleated lace shade that could easily be seen through and it wasn’t quite wide enough for the window.  All of these things combined made this a bathroom that no one liked to use.  The new blind was easy to install, fits the window perfectly, has a much cleaner look, and provides a lot more privacy than what we had before.  It’s still a funny little bathroom, but it’s a lot nicer to have the option of privacy now.

I ordered new roman shades for our kitchen last weekend and we spent yesterday afternoon putting them up.  The roman shades I ordered were the Cape Cod shades from JCPenney in the Golden Oak color.  Because we were concerned about keeping the appearance consistent between these shades and others on the front of our house, I also ordered privacy liners from Target.

The privacy liner is velcroed to the top of the shade

Installing the privacy liners on the back of the roman shades was the first thing we did yesterday.  It was pretty simple.  We laid the shades out on the floor with the back facing up and then placed the liner over the top of the shade so that it was positioned how we’d want it when it was attached.  The liners are just a white sheet of fabric with battons at various intervals down the length.  Based on some feedback I’d read on the Target website and a comment in the instructions that came with them, I decided to iron them before attaching them to the shade to give them a less wrinkled appearance from the outside.  The liners are then attached to the back of the roman shade with velcro at the top of the shade and some plastic clips along the length of the shade.  The instructions said to attach the velcro to the top of the

Plastic clips attach the liner to the shade.

back of the shade and then secure it with some tacks that were provided.  Our shade didn’t have a good place to attach the velcro on the back of the shade, so we opted to attach it to the top of the headrail instead.  We also decided not to tack the velcro in because positioning it on the headrail seemed like it would keep the liner in place just fine.  The rest of the liner then attached to the shades with the plastic clips provided, which clipped the liner to the strings on the back of the shade at various intervals.  It only took about 5 minutes a shade to install the liner and I think it was worth it.  They look about like white sheets from the outside, but they do make the window treatments look more neutral, so I think it was worth it to put them up - I think we’d notice seeing the wooden color from outside a lot more and not like it.

The kitchen windows with privacy liners on the shades.

The mounting brackets for the roman shades.

Installation of the shades wasn’t too bad either.  We did an outside mount, but wound up not mounting the shades too much higher than the windows.  I was initially concerned about the fact that the shades were a standard 72″ long while our windows are only 53″ long, but it turns out that it looks pretty natural for roman shades to not be lowered completely, so we decided just to go with it and not try to shorten them or mount them higher to compensate.  The blinds are hung with two brackets that mount into the window trim and provide bolts for the shade to be secured to using a wing nut.  The brackets and nuts provide some room for adjustments as far as centering the shade on the window and even straightening it a little.  Overall, installation of the blinds was pretty easy.  It took longer than we thought it should (as always), but there wasn’t anything difficult about it.

The new kitchen shades!

As part of the installation, we had to remove the curtain we’d had up in the kitchen before because the supports for the curtain rod were in the way of where the blinds needed to be mounted, so they haven’t gone back up yet.  I think we still need a valance of some type, but I’m planning to get another curtain rod that can be mounted a little higher (probably above the windows) so it won’t be in the way of the shades.  I need to find something that has enough clearance for the blinds to be underneath the valance and not interfere with it.  We’re also limited because the windows are right up next to the corner of the room and most of the curtain rods that are long enough to span all three windows have pretty big finials on each end that won’t fit.  I found these on the Lowe’s website that I kind of like, but there’s not much information posted about them, so I need to go to the store to see if I can figure out how big the finials actually are and how much clearance the curtain rod will give for the blinds:

New curtain rod for the kitchen valance?

I’d really like to replace the hardware on our kitchen cabinets with something a little less gold, but we took one of the handles off tonight and discovered that the door and drawer fronts are discolored where the metal plate had been behind the handles.  I’d really like to not have to use backplates with the new hardware, but I’m afraid it will look worse to see the discoloration behind the handles if we don’t put new ones on.

Anyone have any thoughts on how to make it not as noticeable without having to refinish the cabinets?

I finally broke down yesterday and placed an order for shades for a few rooms in the house.  Now that it’s getting dark earlier, I’m starting to feel more self conscious about the fact that we have nothing in the way of our neighbors watching us eat dinner at the kitchen table every night.  So, I decided it was time to finally order some blinds for the windows in our kitchen and laundry room (which have been blind-less since we moved in last fall) and a replacement blind for the bathroom in our attic, which has had a lacy see-through shade until now.

For the kitchen windows, I decided on the Cape Code roman shades from JCPenney, in the Golden Oak color.  I ordered a standard size (since custom is so much more expensive) and I’m planning to do an outside mount with them so I’ll have a little more flexibility about how high they’re mounted.  The windows are only 57″ tall, but the standard length for the blinds was 72″, so I’m not sure if it will look weird to have the extra material at the bottom or not.  It doesn’t sound like they come with instructions for shortening the blinds, but I looked at them in the store for a while and I think it wouldn’t be too hard to do if I needed to.  Because the rest of our shades look white from the outside, I also ordered some white privacy liners for roman shades from Target.  They come in the same size as the blinds and it sounds like they clip on the back pretty easily.  I’m not really concerned about privacy since it seems like the blinds are woven pretty tightly, so all I’m looking for is just a uniform appearance from the front of the house.  Hopefully they’ll do the trick.

For the second floor laundry room, I wound up having to order some custom shades because the window sizes are so non-standard, but there were only two windows, so it wasn’t too pricey.  For that room I ordered 1″ Levalor Mark I cordless aluminum mini blinds to match the ones in the front bedroom just opposite it.  The blinds that we already have in the bedroom were installed by the previous owner, so I took a one of them down yesterday to get the color and style from the sticker inside the head rail of the blind.  The color we ordered is called “White Cap” and it’s a slightly creamier color than the standard shade of white, so it matches the trim a little better.  I just hope they haven’t changed the color over the last few years or we could be in for a surprise!

We also ordered a single 1″ Natural Basswood wooden blind from JCPenney (like the ones in the picture, except for in white) for the bathroom on the third floor.  We have one of these in a bathroom on the main floor and we like it a lot for a bathroom, so we thought we’d stick with something we already know we like.  We were able to order a standard size for this one too and, since shortening mini blinds is fairly standard, I’m pretty sure it’ll work out ok for the bathroom.

Anyway, in the next week or so, we should have lots of blinds arriving in the mail.  I’m so excited to finally get some window treatments up and have some privacy from the neighbors!

After all the frustrations of dealing with a tarp cover for the pool last winter, we decided it was time to try something different.  This summer, we researched and ordered a new mesh safety cover for the pool.  We’ve only had it for a few weeks, but so far, it’s a big improvement over what we were dealing with last year.  It also looks a lot cleaner … here are pictures of the old tarp cover and the new mesh cover:

The old tarp cover

The new mesh cover

One of the things we like a lot better about this cover is the fact that it’s a safety cover that’s anchored into the concrete all around the edges of the pool.  We like the piece of mind knowing that the cover would support the weight of anything that might otherwise accidentally fall into the pool.  The cover seems pretty sturdy, but we’ve already noticed a lot of muddy footprints on it, which makes us sort of nervous that the raccoons will attempt to do the same thing to it that they did to the water bags last fall.  So far, so good, though.

Each of the straps that connects the cover to the anchors in the concrete has a spring attached to it, so the cover will have a little give as the snow starts to pile on it this winter.  Right now, we’ve got the cover on pretty loosely, but the recommendation is to put it on so that the springs aren’t more than half-way compressed when there’s no weight on the cover.  This will allow enough give for the cover to stretch and rest on top of the water left in the pool when there’s snow on it.

Anchors for the new cover

It’s also a mesh cover, so the water will be allowed to drain through it into the pool over the course of the winter as the snow melts or when it rains in the spring.  We’re not sure yet if this will be a good thing or not.  We think it will make opening the pool much less work because we won’t have to pump water off the top of the cover (which was the most time consuming part of opening the pool with a tarp cover), but it does mean that we need to periodically keep an eye on the water level in the pool and use a submersible pump to lower it if the level gets too high over the winter.  The guys at the pool store thought we wouldn’t have to worry about it until the middle of March or so, but we’ll probably plan to check it more frequently than that, at least to start with.  We’re also not sure what letting all of that water into the pool will do to the pool water when we open it in the spring.  The pool was pretty much clear this spring when we opened it after having a tarp cover on all winter, but letting all of that water into the pool over the course of the winter seems to almost guarantee that it will be pretty murky come spring.  Everything we’ve read says the trick is to close late and open early so that the water temperature stays at or below 60 degrees during the time that the pool is closed to prevent the algae from growing.  Guess we’ll have to wait and see how that turns out.  For now, though, it’s sure nice to not have to deal with leaking water bags!

Since we moved into the house last fall, we’ve had plans to pull out the hedge directly in front of the house.  It blocked the view of the front door from the street and made the driveway pretty tight so it was hard to drive around without scratching the car with the bushes.  Here’s a picture of how it looked this spring right when everything started looking green.  It’s filled in a lot more since this picture was taken.

Today, we went out to clean up the flower bed a little and spread some mulch and decided we’d try pulling some of the bushes to see how it went.  We wound up pulling all of the non-evergreen bushes on either end of the hedge using a chain hooked to our lawn mower.  Once all of those were gone, there wasn’t really much point in keeping the 8′ tall row of ever greens in the middle, so Chad took a chain saw to them.  We hauled them out branch by branch and then cut the stumps off at ground level.  We still need to put down some fresh mulch where the bushes were and clean up all of the leaves from last fall that were stuck between the bushes when we started pulling them, but even without that, we think it’s an improvement.  Here’s the “after” photo:

The water in our pool started to turn a little cloudy over the weekend.  After running the first set of tests, the only difference we noticed about the water was that the pH level looked a little high.  So, on Tuesday, I added some pH Minus to try to bring it back to a more acceptable range, which appears to have worked (it’s now a much more normal 7.4).  After that adjustment, all elements of the pool chemistry were within the acceptable range, but the water didn’t look any better … in fact it started getting worse.  As of yesterday, the pool had turned a nice shade of green and was so cloudy I couldn’t see the bottom drain.

Even though the chlorine level has remained higher than we normally keep it all week, I still shocked the pool two nights ago to try to kill whatever was growing in the water, but it hasn’t seemed to make a difference.  Because the chemistry of the pool water seems to be fine, we’re now thinking the cause of the problem is the our sand filter becoming “channeled” so that the water passes through it without actually being filtered.  To fix this, I backwashed until the site-glass turned clear and then started the rinse cycle, planning to let it run for a while, but only about a minute in, the small corregated pipe we’re using as a backwash hose came detatched from the filter (and wouldn’t stay attached again with all of the water pressure once it had come loose) so I had to turn it off and just start filtering again.  Even with only a minute or so of rinsing, though, it seems like the filter is starting to work a little better … the drain was at least visible by the time I got home from work tonight.

We bought a bigger diameter corrugated pipe tonight to use for backwashing so we can get that back up and running this weekend.  Hopefully after a full cycle of backwashing and rinsing, we’ll notice an even bigger improvement in the filter performance and our pool water will go back to being crystal clear.