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One of the nicest things about my cabin in the woods is how the living room has enormous windows with a million dollar view out every one.
The not so nice thing is that one of these windows is a 10 foot long single pane draft monster!
I made draft blockers out of some rolled fleece a couple of weeks ago, and that helped a lot….until the temperature dropped.
Look at the frost that covered the field by my house this morning! Brrrr…. the grass was positively crunchy from it!
As it’s difficult to find a 10 foot long curtain rod (and I’m cheap) I broke out the high tech hammer and nails to do this project. I used items that I already had:
4 curtains
2 plush throws
Nails
Safety pins
For the first step, I took two rather battered plush throws and hung them over the windows. This was not pretty of course, and there is no way I could handle leaving it like this. I left the draft blockers in place because every layer helps!
I used safety pins to attach the throws together in the middle.
Then I hung curtains over the throws. I didn’t have one type of curtain so I placed some sheers in the middle and then added regular drapes to the ends. The drapes are also nailed to the walls at each end in order to keep out a bit more of the draft. I nailed small pleats into the drapes to make it look as though the were hung on a rod (well, sort of.) Here is the end result. Not bright and sunny, but this west facing window really didn’t add much in the way of sunlight anyway. I have to sacrifice the view of the pine grove for the winter, too, but warmth is really more important. We noticed a significant difference in temperature after doing this.
NICE!
I know you are super tight on your budget and I know you have probably heard of or have used those window insulation kits with the plastic sheet and the double sided tape. Since your window is so large you might want to use a clear painter’s tarp and some tape and at the end of the winter season gentle pull the tarp off and save it for next season. Just something to think of since weather is getting cold here in western PA too.
Then you get a little bit of the view and no draft (I did it to my window a few weeks ago)
That’s a great idea with the painter’s tarp! The insulation kits, for the amount I’d need, were outrageous but this would be far more do-able!
Thank you!
~ D
Daisy
I have a monster picture window and it has a crack in it. What I did is
went to home Depot and bought a 12 ft piece of conduit. put up cup hooks
and used that as a rod. Then the hoarder I am all the bubble wrap I have saved I made a 2 panel curtain. I taped the bottom and sides to the trim.
I have sun there about an hour a day but that bubble wrap sure holds the heat. A couple of my small windows that get sun I made bubble wrap window
shades. It isn’t pretty but it sure works. We have a friend that runs a body shop and I get my bubble wrap from him, the parts are wrapped in it.
Windy
I love the bubble wrap idea, Windy! I have two kitchen windows left that need a little “tlc” – and I just happen to have bubble wrap!!! Cha-ching!!! 🙂
Daisy
My wife and I lived in a remote country house in the 1970s and early 80s. We heated with wood stoves. The windows were single paned and it seemed the house never warmed. The ultimate solution was to purchase a roll of polyethylene and wooden furring strips. Cover the windows from the outside with poly held in place with furring strips nailed to the wooden window frames. Don’t drive the nails all the way so it is easy to remove the strips in the spring. They can be used the next years but the poly should be new each year. Use thinner nails to avoid marring the window frames. The small nail holes close in the warmer weather. The house was then toasty and with no drafts. The total cost was about $10 (in the 1970s) and about 2 or 3 hours labor.
Living in the country was the most fun we had. I will probably live that way in retirement if I can.
Have fun.
Probably a bit late now but survival blankets only cost £1 over here and its kind of the point of them.
I rented a flat once and the heating and water was all in one, so I had to sit there in hot weather sweating with the heating on! Needless to say I got out of there as soon as my contract ended up in a south facing bedsit that was inland and I have always been coastal. It was lovely in the snow I didn’t have the heating on at all in the day only in the evening but when it came to the summer we had a heatwave and people were dying. There was literally no escape and even when the night came it would start feeling cooler about midnight and I would have to close the window because it was in the city so as soon as the sun came up it was just sweat city again, sigh good times.