Reasons I hate my sliding glass door, and a ray of hope.

So we live in a rental house.  While most things here are functional and fine, there's a few things that could use some help.  I have a list for the maintenance guy.  But the thing that really has annoyed me is the sliding glass door, and everything that comes with it.

The Door
It has to be the cheapest door you could buy in 1986. Previous renters have let their dogs scratch it to pieces.  My kids like to bang on it and slam it....and I'm terrified it's going to break and cut them all to bits.  They really get yelled at for that one.  My MIL told me a story about that happening to someone she knew, and it's haunted me ever since.

The Lock
There's also a bar lock. A vengeful bar lock. The thing literally falls any old time it wants to, and has clocked me on the top of my head a few times.  It's also been kind enough to lock me out on multiple occasions.  Luckily, the door is so cheap, comfortingly, I learned I can break back in easily.  Which is why a baby gate gets wedged there every night now.  If I can manage to break in repeatedly, you know it's easy.

The Blinds
In addition to that, it has the dreaded vertical blinds.  They're also the cheapest ever, but appear to be about the 1995 version of cheap.  In the course of 2 years, with two small children, we're only 3 blinds are injured and/or missing. There's zebra print duct tape holding one on (classy, right?).

They fall off all the time. They offer no privacy (with missing blinds especially).  Besides that, just just annoying and ugly.

My Solution:


While I can't ditch the blinds entirely, I can deal with the privacy issue.
A while back, I found an Ikea curtain at Goodwill for $4 that I was going to use to make a dress.  I never got around to it, and decided to use it as a curtain (inventive, yes?).  I used a shower curtain rod across the window, and after trimming the curtain a bit, the setup covers the sliding glass door perfectly. And on the cheap.

The Screen Door

Daily though, the thing that's most obnoxious?  The screen door. On nice days, when you want the kids to be able to run in and out, there's the screen door that constantly runs off it's track and crashes to the ground when a kid looks at it funny.  It's cheap, metal screen, and has holes in it too, so exactly what is it doing for me?  Driving me insane, that's what.  Well, C knocked it off yesterday when opening it, and I just had enough.  That's it. I threw it up over my head and hauled it where no one will ever find it or see it again ( aka  - into the garage).

OK, half a problem solved.  Now I have no screen.

My Solution:

My sister has one of these though, a Velcro screen you attach on a rod across the door frame:

Amazon

But if I wanted to spend that much, surely I could just buy a screen door.  Which I won't do, because as I said, we're renters. And let's face it, for $50, I could probably make a dozen or so of those.

However, turns out I already had the makings of a solution. I had picked up a 5 yard bolt of screening mesh at Walmart a few months ago, and another couple of months ago, I grabbed some fusible webbing type stuff at Ikea (I don't even know why, that store just tells me to buy random things that I NEED).   I took a picture of the webbing itself, but no matter what I did, it always looked liked a certain slender feminine product, and I couldn't handle it being on here!

I unrolled my fabric, and it turns out to be the perfect width for that spot with no cutting.  Thank goodness, because I hate cutting long straight lines.  Let me rephrase that - I can not for the life of me make the lines straight.  There will be zigzags all the way down. Thank goodness I avoided that trap.

I measured the height, tacked on a few inches for the hem and rod pocket, and cut the length.  I used the webbing to hem the bottom and make the rod pocket. Isn't it cool how it melts and glues the layers together?

And hung it up.  I fit it on the shower curtain rod like the other curtain.

 I hung some of my scented pattern weights on the edge, since the wind wanted to blow it in the house.

15 minutes of work and maybe 7 bucks in materials, and I'm done.  It keeps out the bugs, lets the kids and animals run in and out, and doesn't annoy the living daylights out of me. And now it smells like lavender (thank you pattern weights!).  It's an all-around improvement.

I'll eventually have to sew the hem an rod pocket, I don't think the fusing will last too long with the stress of children and animals pulling on it all the time. Heck, I can't either, I can't blame it.

Thanks for letting me rant about that door. I feel better now. Hopefully you got some ideas for dealing with yours, heaven forbid you also got stuck with one.

Soon to come?

This is my fabric storage. You don't even want to see the area under it.  Needs some help, yes?  I'll show you soon how I fold my fabric for storage, how I sort it, etc.  And if you have a great solution for me for storage, please pass it along!  I have no more floor space.

Have a great weekend!  I'm off to the Farmers' Market and maybe Goodwill if I'm lucky.