The Big Picture (Window) or "What Were They Thinking?!"

Last weekend, I boldly tried an artsy experiment on a grand scale. Our 100 year old house has a downstairs bathroom addition (formerly a side porch) with one glaring flaw. It has a huge picture window in it so all the world can see anyone as they shower and use the toilet. Nice! We could install comfortable seating on the deck and sell tickets for the show!
"What were they thinking?!"
When we first moved into the house, there were pretty, but ineffective, lace curtains hanging in the window that takes up the whole outside wall of the room. We hung up heavy, black out curtains which offered a lot of privacy, but completely blocked the beautiful natural light and made the room feel small and, well, we might as well have bricked up the window and been done with it!

So last weekend, my husband took down the curtains without any plan, just because he was tired of the dark dungeon we had on our ground floor. Fortunately I did have a plan.

I saw it in the movie Inception. One of the few non-dream sequences took place in an old warehouse. For privacy, the wall of windows, made up of smaller panes, were blocked out with old, yellowed newspaper glued over the glass.

I LOVED it!

Only my husband wouldn't go for yellowed newspaper.

Our house was not abandoned.

So I scrounged up some white (gift wrap) tissue paper and some that had sheet music printed on it, easily found a sponge brush and my bottle(s) of Mod Podge and attacked the windows.
WooHoo!

Imagine doing your little altered art collage-y thingies on a wall in your house!

I spread Mod Podge with wild abandon on the (cleaned) windows, working quickly so I could stick the tissue paper down while the glue was still wet. The fragile paper tore in places, but I just patched it later. I wasn't worried about neatness. This was not a permanent fix in a room that gets steamy. Mod Podge is water soluable.

BUT, it would work for now.

I glued down two layers of the white paper for better opacity and the sheet music tissue for design and for the fact that I ran out of white tissue.

This was not a completely premeditated project. I made do. We may get etching cream and do something permanent to the windows later. For now, I like the soji screen (spelling?) effect and am inspired to strip the existing "country" wallpaper to expose whatever is underneath. I am envisioning an industrial farmhouse look with a hint of zen.

My husband wants to rip out the whole bathroom and re-do the floor (currently carpeted- ick!) and replace all of the bath fixtures, but that will take some cash. He sees a pedestal sink while I see an antique furniture piece fitted with a sink or large ceramic bowl (think "wash stand").

Right now I'm just happy to see the bathroom glowing with sunlight.
By the way, because I know there will be questions; as I worked on the windows, we kept checking the modesty factor of my improvised frosted windows.
Mod Podged tissue paper over glass offers pretty good privacy.

And installing it is cheap therapy.

:)