Oriental, NC

I had ordered a roll of reflective "bubble wrap" insulation from Lowe's to make some covers for our salon windows.  A huge amount of heat radiates thru those big windows on sunny days.  It's not a problem in the Bahamas because the boat is always opened up and there is a steady breeze flowing.   Plus the temp rarely goes above 80 when we're there. 

But sitting here in NC as summer approaches, the heat load is large with little or no breeze.  We're running the a/c units now and they keep us quite comfortable, but I wanted to minimize the work they're having to do.

First I taped together some masking paper (I didn't have any large sheets of paper) for a pattern.

Then just transferred the pattern to the material and cut it out, a bit oversized.

And it did fit pretty well - but I just wasn't pleased with the "look".

So I decided to go another route - I cut pieces that fit on the out side of the windows - held in place by the blue snap-on sunshield.

Used the sunshield itself as a pattern.

Here's the interior now.  I like the way this looks better.  Now when we sail, I'll just un-snap and remove the shields just like taking a sunshade out of your car windshield.   It does make the salon a bit darker - but there's plenty of light coming in thru the overhead windows and entry door.

And since it was our anniversary - sweet Cathy and Ed treated us to a wonderful evening of happy hour snacks, dinner and Ed's special key lime pie with fresh whipped cream!  So nice of them and it was all delicious!