Ambitious plans for making do

I am really beginning to thank my lucky stars for the time I spent doing theatrical backstage work. What, you may ask, does that have to do with rehabbing a house?

Actually, a great deal, if you have a lot of cosmetic oddness and no money to deal with it. Set, costume and prop design and construction (all of which I have done) really come down to creatively making things do what they aren't intended to do at all. Like turning plywood into a house in Venice, or making an axe out of wood, foam, paint and glue.

Take, for example, the nice, solid, dependable, MODERN, Andersen casement storm windows in our screen porch:



Nice enough, but they Really Do Not Go With Our House. I've been puzzling over what to do with them to make them work, without having to replace the things.

Today, I pulled an interior screen out and looked at the psuedo-mullions. They are made of plastic and they snap into the frames, so I should be able to pull them out and modify them (epoxy is my friend) to a more appropriate appearance.





That's my mockup of what they might look like. Hopefully. OTOH, I may just be able to make nice wooden ones, too. We'll see. It's a future project, probably won't happen until we've been there awhile. But now I think I can fix it, and I rest a little easier.