Every fall and throughout the winter, The Husband and I have a running battle about "winterizing" the back porch. The first winter after we built it, we stapled thick plastic around the outside of the porch. It made the inside of the porch far warmer than the outside temp. But the plastic was thick, and not very see-through, and every year since then, The Husband has said, "I don't like being unable to see out," and so we have not put up any plastic.
But we are about 5 years older now, and our bones are cold and brittle. I spend a lot of time working out here, cold or not. And the cold is misery now.
This fall, I said, 'WE ARE GOING TO WRAP THE PORCH THIS YEAR."
A couple of weeks ago, The Husband said he had an idea - a 10' x 30' wedding tent, with clear plastic windows. We could use the size to wrap the porch, and sell or give away the roof and the tent poles. He sent me a link to the tent he had seen. I did a little calculating and determined that 80 feet (two 30' sides, and two 10' ends) would be enough to do the job, and ordered it immediately. We used the frame and the top at Son #1's wedding reception two weekends ago. Yesterday, I decided it was time to use the sides to wrap the porch.
The plan was to Velcro the sides to the porch to make it easy to take them off come spring and re-install them next fall. Yesterday morning, I started applying the Velcro around the bottom of the porch while The Husband was across the road helping Nanny install Zoom on her laptop. When he came home, he got out the ladder and helped me stick the Velcro around the top. Piece of cake.
However, when we applied Velcro to the first tent panel and stuck it up, we discovered that the panel was about a foot too short to reach the bottom of the porch. I wanted to scream. And throw things. Etc.
When the fit passed, I started thinking how we could remedy the problem. My sewing room is full of an assortment of fabric and other craft-related things. In one corner, there was a big roll of white vinyl. Perhaps I could cut 12"-wide strips and sew them to the plastic tent sides. This was a nightmare of a job, and there wasn't enough vinyl to do all the panels. Thankfully, the two end panels of the tent (which did not have windows in them) provided enough plastic to lengthen the remaining side panels.
We finished putting the last panel in place just as the sun went down. This plastic is thin - about like a tarp - and I am not sure it's going to hold in the heat like the plastic we first used. Also, we're going to need to get some white duct tape to tape the panels together where they're overlapped so the wind doesn't whip them.
Admittedly, these panels look better than thick plastic.
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