You Make a Better Door Than a Window. AKA DIY Privacy Film Tutorial.

"You make a better door than a window." It's something that may have been heard around here once or twice. Trash talk. When you've got siblings, it's kind of a given I suppose. Truth is, we do a lot of trash talking here.

What can I say? We LIKE trash! As Oscar the Grouch said, "anything dirty or dingy or dusty" and we dig it. Sometimes literally dig it out of trash bins, dumpsters, whatever. We ain't got no pride. But believe it or not, that door above, wasn't even a throw away. I PAID for it.
Found it on a facebook yard sale site. I love those sites....did a whole post about how to find and use them. I paid about $40 for this door. Pure vintage-trashy-loveliness. The plan was to use this in our hallway/kids bathroom. We removed the old standard door in that space that sat between the water closet and sinks, and put in a pocket for a pocket door. And this beauty was to be our new (ok, old) pocket door.





But before we could install it, I had to make this trashy gal even trashier. I mean, I REALLY messed her up. Originally, I wanted the door to be a kind of vintage-y gas station light green. So I sanded her, and spray painted her. OMG...WHAT A DISASTER.





Hey, we all make mistakes. And I'm a do-er. I try things. Hence, LOTS-o-screw-ups. Whatevs.
I paid penance by having to spend H.O.U.R.S. sanding out most of the green. I still left a smidge, because it gave it a little flair, but OY. That was a mess. So, I decided to just paint it with Behr's Ultra Pure White Semi-Gloss, to match the trim we were putting into the space. To make this long story short, short as The Fresh Prince would say...at some point I just threw my hands up and figured I was happy enough to put it in.
"BUT WAIT", you say..."THAT DOOR HAS WINDOWS!" "ISN'T THE POINT OF HAVING A DOOR IN A BATHROOM TO GIVE YOU SOME PRIVACY??!!" Ok, pipe down people. I hear you. YES, privacy is...well, we'll call it a "bonus". Reality is that in a house with three kids, there's NO SUCH THING as privacy. But we gotta at least FAKE it, right?!
The thing about this bathroom space is that there is absolutely no natural light. This was the space BEFORE.





Bummer. Last thing you want when you're designing a space is to be working in a pitch black cave. We thought about putting tubular skylights in the room, but those would have busted our budget. We settled on MASSIVE amounts of lighting, AND this door...with said windows.
Our solution? Privacy film!





Privacy film is inexpensive, and it's something that anyone could DIY.
[url=http://heatherednest.com/2015/08/you-make-a-better-door-than-a-window-aka-diy-privacy-film-tutorial.html]>>> All the step by step instructions can be found HERE





Bottom line is that for not a lot of money, and only a little bit of a time investment (maybe an hour, tops), we were able to maximize the little light we had, while keeping things in the privy private.
Win, win I think. Hope someone is inspired (although inspiration is a strong word) to give this little DIY a try!






Original article and pictures take http://www.hometalk.com/9645074/diy-privacy-film-tutorial-for-door-with-windows site