#The_Wookie and I just moved into a place and have been having a blast moving in and setting up the house. Unfortunately, in an effort to increase the curb appeal, the previous owners removed a bunch of bushes along the front of the house that turned out to have had a very important purpose… blocking the large window that looked into the master bathroom’s shower from the entire neighborhood view. The windows are frosted, but you can still make out shapes and colors through the window when someone is in the shower. If you look closely in the “before” picture note that you can clearly make out shampoo and conditioner bottles in the window.
We liked how much natural light came into the bathroom in the mornings so we didn’t want something to completely block all of the light. It needed to be big and we needed it quickly. #The_Wookie and I tossed around a bunch of ideas to block the view, but given the timeline for the project and the size the only thing that made sense was some sort of privacy screen. So off to Pinterest we went, looking for inspiration.
I drew up basic plans for the supports and had a general idea that the majority of the structure should consist of horizontal slats. I decided to make the vertical posts out of rough cut 4×4 cedar posts and the horizontal slats out of thin cedar strips. I wanted a couple of different widths for the slats but I was unable to find anything that was the right thickness and widths. I ended up buying cedar fence pickets with the plan of ripping them to create the various width slats.
I dug the post holes approximately 20 inches in the ground. Before placing the posts in, I added 4-6 inches of pea gravel to the bottom of each of the holes. Then the posts where cemented in place. The vertical slats where cut to length using a miter saw and then ripped to get the different width slats. We ripped the slats either exactly in half or in 1/3 and 2/3 sections. The slats were then “randomly” screwed to the posts. I used a couple short sections of the off cuts to create spacers to keep the vertical spacing consistent. To cover the screws and the joints in the middle of the screen we used a couple of longer fence pickets run vertically and then screwed in place. We are very happy with the final results and it still lets in a lot of light into the bathroom, while preventing the neighbors from knowing every time we take a shower.
