Screen Time

It is officially the 1st of November, and having been a quite warm Halloween evening last night, I am ready for lower temperatures and no longer hearing my AC unit kick on. Now the screen time I'm referencing is not looking at a computer/Ipad/phone. We do have a little bit of that, but I'm talking about something else: our window screens!

This weekend, we decided to do another little DIY project. We actually attempted this project a little under two months ago and failed miserably because the Home Depot we went to was completely understocked and depleted of window screening materials. It was a big flop, although we did repair one of our existing screens by reusing what we already had.

The project we meant to attempt was creating two completely brand new screens for two windows which did not have screens when we bought the house. No idea how that happens, but with this house, we learned not to ask the "why" questions. In order to make new screens, we needed some materials and tools:

Window Screen, sold in rolls


Window Screen Frame


Window Screen Corner Frames


Window Screen Clips


Window Screen Pull Tabs


Window Spline


Spline Roller


Hacksaw


Utility Knife


Measuring tape and scissors. Of course we all know what measuring tape and scissors look like, so I don't think I need to identify that for anyone :) Safety glasses might be good to have, although nothing went violently flying for this project, but I don't want to say you don't need them because there is some cutting involved.

Needless to say, what we thought was an easy, beginner level DIY that we thought could be accomplished in an evening....took a little longer than we thought. The first screen we made ended up taking over 2 hours to finish. The second one, we finished in about 1 hour. I guess we should have known, however easy something is to do, the first time is always going to take longer. And a key note I should always remember: messing up is easier than doing it correctly.

If you want to learn how to make a window screen, you can check out this link here that has a nice video. A few things this video does not include instructions on : springs and pull tabs.

From the outside. You can see the wavy mesh material of our screen!
And if you can't...well, it blends in pretty well because it's the right size to fit :) 

Our newly screened window that can now be
opened to allow our living room to breathe a little :)

I'm excited for this fall and winter because it means I can now open two of the largest windows in our house to allow for some outdoor air to penetrate into our once extremely musty (now only slightly musty) house. We missed out big time last year, but now we have no excuse :)

Total Cost: $25
Total Time Spent: 3 hours
Total Experience Gained: Priceless