The Find!
A bunch of rolled up wooden (or wooden-ish) window coverings were sitting in a pile of other junk. You know the type of pile I'm talking about, clearly from someone's home renovation project -- with scrap lumber cut to odd unusable sizes, some empty paint cans, maybe a fish tank or two. Window treatments can be expensive, especially custom window treatments, so I was surprised to see a pile containing two different types of wooden slat rollup shades.
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| Wooden blinds rescued from trash. |
The Re-Use of Old Wooden Blinds
As soon as I saw the pile of wooden blinds, I knew knew knew exactly what they could be repurposed into - a patio privacy screen! The old wooden window coverings would be perfect to screen the edge of a deck that looks towards a view of a dumpster - not really conducive to the restful garden feeling I'm going for.
This re-use was really simple, here's how I did it.
Step1) Remove the majority of the blinds yardage from the top section that held the shade control mechanisms (the part that would be mounted to a wall). For these blinds that meant cutting the 'warp' in a few spots. Save the original pull cord.
Step 2) Tie together any loose ends (the warp) of the cording that runs between the slats to hold them together.
Step 3) Fold the length of blinds in half, or to the desired length.
Step 4) Run the original pull cord through the folded section of blinds and tie it around the fence support. This allows the blinds to hang without requiring any hardware installation. Check the blinds for level-ness if that matters.
Step 5) Enjoy your new privacy screening.
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| Newly installed privacy screen |
Conclusion
If you're getting rid of window treatments, try offering them up on a local 'buy nothing' group before tossing them in the trash. Someone else might be able to give them a new purpose and extend their useful life! Happy freestyling.