From Frugal Foundations to Fortified Family Future

Bluegreen143

I have the opposite issue of wanting to add a window into my dining room. The builders have built all the houses the same in the estate, regardless of the orientation of the buildings in their plots, so we have no windows which look out into the (fairly large and attractive) garden, except in the conservatory we added, and most of the windows in the entire house are north facing 🙄. Total lack of common sense on the part of the builders! Too expensive to remedy now but it drives me wild how dark both my living and dining rooms are because of the windows being on the “wrong” walls.

rtandon27

The front aspect of our house is also north facing - both downstairs and upstairs windows do very little to keep the cold air out even though they are double glazed!  We put a curtain over the front door, also north facing, as the air coming through the letter box is just enough to chill the air during the winter!  The main bedroom with it's two windows faces south which is perfectly useless during the day and in the summer we have to keep the curtains in that room drawn to keep out the heat.  At some point the windows need resealing and shutter blinds mounted internally as well as a new front and back door - I dread to think what this will end up costing!

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning MFW'rs

Thank you for your kind offer greenbee but I'm going to need to give consideration to the 'whats and hows' of addtional curtainage in this house.  Two of the doors that 'need' some sort of additional draft-proofing don't lend themselves to having curtains installed - well, not when the curtain needs drawing back to open the door IYSWIM.  To be honest, better insulated doors would be a good start.  I thought you could get them, and we were 'sold' a back door in our previous house that was supposed to be half double glazed (needed to get light into the tiny kitchen), and half 'super insulated' - but I doubt it was, it sounded hollow as anything when you knocked it.  

Housing estate orientation is clearly about putting the max houses on the smallest plots.  Houses at higher elevations were put to our south-east and south-west to block sunlight and warming winds, and yet there is little or nothing (higher) to the north...... 🙄

Anyway, first day of Term.  We have had more slushy, wet snow overnight, which has already made everywhere slippy and it's melting quickly - if it freezes it will be horrible.  

Activity has been cancelled due to ongoing technical issues, but i for one am breathing a sigh of relief.  The rural back roads we have to use are bad enough, but they are also not a priority for gritting and/or are prone to flooding. It will mean we have a little CHB money left over, but giving it a nano-second of thought, there are a gazinty million things on the list of 'new clothes/shoes' for LG that will gobble up any 'spare' money, so it won't be unused for long.....

I need to use the dehu to dry some clothes today.  Thankfully lightweight and small, but they are needed.  There is a quite good breeze, but we're at risk of ongoing showers today, so probably not worth pegging out (unfortunately).  

Right, best crack on.  Moving about will keep me warm too 😁

Ta for being here.  Greying X

greenbee

I have the same problem with some of the doors not being ideal for curtains due to the need to open them, which is why I started with cheap tension rods and old curtain poles (the bits of the house with external doors will be the last to be decorated).

I can recommend trying your local charity shops for curtains and blinds, as I dropped off masses of them just before Christmas - stuff from the old house that doesn't fit and can't be made to fit, stuff that was left here by the vendors that I am no way going to use (not my style of fabric, even when freezing cold!). Quite a lot of thermal blinds, and thick eyelet curtains. 

Keep warm and stay safe in the wintery weather.

lucielle

De-lurking. You can get special door curtain rods called portiere rods. These fix on the wall and the door. The curtain opens with the door. They are really good. 

L

elsien

I did look at portiere rods myself, but they didn't seem designed to take the weight of the quite heavy door curtain I wanted to put up. 

Greying_Pilgrim

lucielle said:

De-lurking. You can get special door curtain rods called portiere rods. These fix on the wall and the door. The curtain opens with the door. They are really good. 

L

Sweetie - are those the ones that are hinged?  Surely they only 'rest' against the door though?  Or can you fix into UPVC?  Something like that may work with the door to the garage, as that is wooden.  Mind, the garage door is worse than the front door for a curtain being 'in the way' when the door needs to be accessible. Food for thought thought, and I'm discounting nowt.   Thank you for joining in the convo lucielle - I remember you from Pippi's thread 😁

Greying X

badmemory

Perhaps the advantage of not having a fancy curtain is that when entering if the curtain is across you basically just shove.  Then just pull to stop it getting trapped in the closing door.  I don't think one that moves with the door would act as much of a draft excluder although would help keep the cold out.

rtandon27

wow - I'd never heard of those rods!  - food for thought - I went down the rabbit hole and also found swinging rods that swivel out of the way - they appear to be mounted to the door frame which might work for our front door.  The number of times Oh & I have both managed to yank the entire curtain rod and tension bar down from the front door cannot even be counted!

greenbee

I have one of the swinging rods on the outward opening back door. Not that it has been opened since the rod went up. There's also a tension rod behind it with a fleece on. Same on the utility room door -tension rod with fleece, then curtain pole above it. The inward opening garage door currently just has a tension rod, but I'll replace it with a fixed metal pole (probably one meant for a wardrobe) as I want to put something heavier up there.