For all that our lot lacks in width, it makes up for in depth. Just take a gander at the space we have available for our upcoming backyard rehab. I’d estimate that the lot is at least three times deeper than it is wide. This is great! Except for the fact that our bathroom window looks directly into our neighbor’s carport/side door. Creepy.
So here we have the bathroom (photo lazily plucked from my home tour), note the nasty yellowish mini-blinds:
When we moved in, there was a ton of very tall and thick bamboo (some of it sickly/dead) that grew well past the window and blocked any visibility. But during the house-painting process, we weeded out the sickly pieces and the bamboo got chopped fairly short. One day we arrived at home to find out that our neighbor had removed it altogether! (Pretty sure it was on our property… but whatever…) We were left with nothing but extremely dirty mini-blinds to prevent any kind of peep-show from happening. We do not want to build that close of a relationship with our Spanish-speaking neighbor.
(Ah, now the post title makes sense…)
This photo not only shows how terrible the artificial light is during a cloudy day (in our case, last Saturday, you may have heard about the day when 100 tornadoes touched down in Kansas. Luckily our city was spared) or when it’s dark outside, but… “Oh, hello there!” You can see all up in our neighbors’ business.
As I mentioned before, the mini-blinds were dis-gus-ting. They had to come down. But we had to come up with another solution. So, as an alternative I took my inspiration from Young House Love (as usual) and got some window-frosting film from Home Depot. Following their hilarious photo-based instructions here we successfully applied it to the windows. Let’s just say it wan’t HARD, but it was no piece of cake either. But these two small panes were a great opportunity for our first shot, and it turned out OK.
Now, the mini-blinds are stored in the basement, with all the hardware attached in a ziplock baggie, just in case someone wants to put them back up someday. I surely won’t.
Doesn’t the room look nicer without all that junk off of the window? Let me tell you, it is much less claustrophobic. Still needs to be touched up where I removed the hardware. The paint can is literally sitting in the bathroom, I just have to do it. I’ll probably take care of it this weekend.
Now if only we could do something about that horrific lighting fixture above the sink… Naturally… I have my ideas for it…
My Friend Staci 
I really like the idea of frosted windows for privacy in certain places (like a bathroom) that can make any window treatment optional or decorative (instead of necessary–especially in a room that sees so much humidity on a regular basis).
Looking at how tall the room appears, I was wondering at how useful you find those high up cabinets over the ugly lights? They *seem* from the photos to be high up enough that a 6′ plus person would still have to get on a step stool to reach them. Is this true to form?
Also, haha. Your room with limited natural light looks a lot like how my photos always turn out even when there’s proper daylight out.
Believe it or not–they are 100% empty. If it was *my* house I’d do away with them altogether and really make the room seem much more spacious!!
Oh yeah, and Doug pretty much has to stand on tip toes to get into them. And he’s 6 foot 2 inches.
I had a feeling! They seem like the kind of cabinets that just don’t function in reality as well as they did in theory. If it were my house, I would say also that those could totally go, which would open up some really great options for lighting in there. Too bad we’re not in charge, haha!