“You don’t know what pollen is until you live in the South.”  That’s what people told me when we were moving here but did I listen?  Of course not!  I used to think that Spring pollen was bad in the Pacific Northwest.  We had not only the yellow pollen that left a gauzy film on our cars but at times it looked like it was snowing outdoors with the cottonwood seed hairs drifting through the air.  HA!  That was amateur stuff compared to the insidious pollen grains that  seep right through the screens on the porch and blanket the furniture in a thick yellow veil.

It isn’t easily dusted off either.  No, it takes a little elbow grease to remove.

That’s why Mr. OTN and I decided that this year we were going to POLLEN PROOF our screened porch.  Well . . . as pollen proof as you can get anyways.

We began by reading all the DIY outdoor curtain posts we could find on Pinterest and then set to work.

We purchased galvanized plumbing pipe and fittings and spray painted them with Rustoleum’s Oil Rubbed Bronze to prevent rust.  You can see in the above photos that the two types of fittings we used were straight and elbow fittings.  For the corners we installed decorative brackets for support.

We placed curtain clips on the rod before screwing the pipes together.  We wanted clips instead of rings for ease of laundering the curtains.

These are the painter’s drop cloths that we purchased at Home Depot . . . after purchasing another brand at Lowe’s and finding out that more than half of the drop cloths purchased had horizontal seams through them.  Not a good look.  In the end these cloths turned out to be a much nicer fabric too and this made me extremely happy.

And now some photos of my room with the drop cloths in place.  I haven’t hemmed or ironed them yet as I’m still trying to decide what length I want and also considering various ways to weight the bottom. 

I bought some lead weighted cord but it was extremely lightweight, more for sheers.  I also don’t want them so heavy that with a gust of wind they pull off the curtain clips. 

I’m leaning toward sewing in some simple chain from the hardware store to weight them or maybe nothing at all.  We don’t have a lot of heavy wind here and I don’t mind the gentle blowing of the curtains.  We did have a windstorm the other day and we simply set our furniture legs on the hems of the drapes.

 Once pollen season is over we will throw the drapes open wide and enjoy the full view of our backyard.

We may even take them down for the summer . . . if we don’t decide to sometimes use this as a sleeping porch.

How fun would that be to camp out in our own backyard?

We might also find them useful in the chill of late Fall when we can close everything up and bring a heater out to the porch for a little afternoon reading . . .

. . . or even a nap, like Cozy here is considering.

Our screened porch is our very favorite place to JUST BE.

 By the way, this is what I use to clip the curtains together when they are closed.

They hold well and are fairly unobtrusive.

And this is what I made to hold them open.  You can bet there will be a “how to” post on that later.

Where are you spending your time this Spring?  Do you have a favorite outdoor place to sit?  I know, many places are still experiencing winter so maybe your favorite Spring place right now is beside a fire in a warm den.

Wherever you are, I hope you’ll take the time to be still and experience being in the here and now.

Blessings,

Links to products I used available on Amazon:

Links to products found at Home Depot:

Galvanized Pipe  (Home Depot will gladly custom cut to size)

Threaded Tee Fittings (make sure you buy the right size to fit your pipe)

Threaded Elbow Fittings (again, buy the right size to fit your pipe)

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