Curtain Alternative

I can honestly say that there are only about four things that I salvaged (temporarily) in our townhouse when we bought it - and one of those things was the curtain that covered our back door.   

When we were painting our family room I burnt a big hole in the curtain with a light bulb from a (shadeless) lamp I was using for extra light.  You'd think the big hole in my curtain would be the motivation I needed to buy a new one.  Um no.  I let the curtain hang on the door for another six months. 

Two weeks ago, I measured the window and finally went to BED BATH & BEYOND for a new curtain.  Bought one, brought it home, started to hang it...and I realized it didn't fit.  Ugh. 

That's when I started thinking about what kind of curtain alternatives there are.  And then, I  remembered there was such a thing as frosted glass spray paint...and I've always wanted to use this stuff!!!  Now I had a reason to!

Here's what I did:
Two days before the idea for this project popped into my head I purchased this DURA-LAR paper below at Michael's craft store.  I bought the durable (and washable) material to make stencils for my curtain makeover project (currently in progress).

I used the DURA-LAR and craft knife shown above to make my stencil. I knew I wanted to do circles (easy breezy. modern. fun. nice looking.) so I searched around the house for a circular object to trace. I outlined one of the panels on the back door so I knew how much space I had to work with. A tea light turned out to be the best item to trace.

I used a ruler to draw straight lines- this was helpful in making sure my circles also stayed in a straight line while tracing.  Once my circles were traced, I used a craft knife to cut the circles out.

Here is my stencil after the circles were cut out.  See how perfect it fits into the panel area.

The only other materials I purchased for this project was double sided tape and Valspar frosting spray paint.

This is our back door BEFORE.

This picture shows how I used the double sided tape.  The tape was great for ensuring that the stencil stuck to the glass closely, in order to prevent the spray paint from bleeding.

The back door AFTER.

Here is another shot of the back door shown in a different light. 

This is a shot of the door from the outside looking in at night time.  This curtain alternative provides the right amount of privacy we need, while still allowing an abundance of sun to shine through.