Window shade thingies

Here's the latest installment of "stuff made out of other stuff".  I keep being amazed at how incredibly satisfying I find it to solve a problem using a bunch of creativity (and also a bunch of scrap that happens to be lying around), and this is my most recent problem-solving happiness.

Here's the problem to solve:  the main window in our Kitchen of Many Delights faces west, which means that during about seven months each year, the evening sun shines right in and blinds the cook.   When I'm the cook, I don't mind; I love having the sun in my face, even if it's so intense I have to squint and turn away.  But my husband, not so much; for him it's like being interrogated by enemy operatives about where the Resistance is planning to sauté onions next.  Or something.  At any rate, my husband is the main Dinner-Maker these days, and it seems unfair to have him tortured just so he can get noodles and salad on the table for his loving wife.

The main window in the Kitchen of Many Delights is very oddly located in a well that sits behind the kitchen sink.  It means that we can't easily get to the window.  In fact, in order to hang a curtain there last summer, I had to get a step stool, climb up onto the counter, and then balance carefully while I reached across the well beyond the sink.  Hanging a curtain is possible, but it's not a feasible thing to open and shut a curtain often; adjusting the curtain requires step stools and clambering.

Last summer, we just hung a curtain all summer long, which suited my husband just fine, but left me a bit sad, because I'm such a sunlight fanatic.  

Okay, so that's the problem.  Ready for the solution?  Scrap lumber, leftover paint, and a bunch of nails rescued from some trash-picked furniture that I'd disassembled.  I used these to make shade thingie.  (I'm sure there's a name for these, but I haven't been introduced, sorry).

Here's the new view from inside the Kitchen of Many Delights, looking out.  

These slats block the sun from shining straight in like a torture-interrogation device, but they let light in indirectly.  Lovely!

Here's the view from the outside.   Can you tell that every individual slat come from a different kind of board (they're different thicknesses, different textures, etc)?  I bet you can't.  And since this is on the side of the house that no one can see from the street, I bet no one else will be able to tell that either . . . not that I'd care if they did.  The side bars were a large rescued former fence board that I zig-zag cut with the jigsaw; you can see that I ran out of material for the bottom slats, but the slats that are already there are quite enough to do the job, so I'm fine with stopping there.

And that's my latest happiness project, costing $0 and giving me the chance to make a mess with a few of my power tools.  Yes!