Hey there! Hope your weekend was great! We didn’t have many plans but I was busy working on our guest room redo for an upcoming post. Oh my goodness…I cannot wait to show you the whole space!
For now I’m sharing another project that makes a HUGE difference in a room. I am always so pleased and surprised by the difference it makes every time I do this – I will probably share every time I finish another window. It makes me that happy. :)
Here’s what the guest room window looked like years back when I repainted the room. I hung the roman shades high:
I hung this one so high because of this specific shade – it was way too low even when fully open. Natural light is a biggie for me in every room so I try to take advantage of it as much as possible. When hung inside the window (inside mount), it blocked half of the window even when pulled up!
So hanging it above worked great. Fast forward to recently and you can see how this one has held up:
Ha! A little wonky. After time they sometimes do this. Usually it’s because the string is caught up on something on the back of the shade but this time it was more than I could fix – the string was worn through and the whole thing needed to be replaced. I had this one for close to ten years so it served us well.
As a side note -- I get asked about our roman shades all the time – I slowly replaced our blinds with these some time ago and I LOVE them. I get mine at Home Depot and they are the Home Decorators flatweave roman shades:
I love them for a few reasons – they are a tight weave so they don’t let much light through at all. This is also great for privacy. They look good from the outside when closed, and my favorite part – they pull up super high so it allows as much light in as possible when I install them inside the window frame.
The only thing is – they’ve changed the color of the shade. Our entire house is more of a brown and the newer ones are more of an espresso, dark color. I still like it, I just loved the original color a lot too. :) And I noticed the new one I got doesn’t pull up quite as far as the others in our house.
So anyway, I’ve trimmed out windows before in our living room (and then in our family room but I didn’t share that process). Our windows just came with a window sill – nothing else. I used to use skinny trim to wrap them to give the look of a little more finished product, but the chunky trim is my favorite. All the windows in the house will get this look eventually…one at a time.
I was so intimidated by this process at first but now I find it to be one of the easiest DIY projects ever. You need to remove the apron (the strip of wood under the sill) first, then use a crowbar to get under the sill and start pulling it up:
The only somewhat involved part after that is making a new sill – which is easy if you keep the old one. So…keep the old one. ;)
My helpers were there with me the whole time of course:
Sweetie heads. :)
I shared this whole process step by step here so check that out if you want to try this project. But you keep the sill so you can use it as a template for the new one:
Framing out a window can be a really inexpensive project or a more mid-range one depending on the kind of wood you use. I use pine for everything – I never go nicer than that. I’ve never found there’s a need to when it’s being painted. But you can get the “select” pine that has no knots in it and that’s a little more expensive.
The knots in the pine can be covered with primer but sometimes the tannins will still come through the paint. For this window I went the cheap route – but spent time going through the cheaper pine for some that had very few knots. And then I cut my pieces around them as much as I could.
Here’s the graphic I put together last time to show the size of each piece of wood: 
Also, that stop piece and the 1x2 at the top are both about half an inch wider than the rest – I have them sticking out 1/4 inch on both sides of the window for a little detail.
The only thing a little different on this window is that I made the window sill flush with the trim at the bottom:
If you look above in that graphic you can see that the sill juts out a bit – I like both looks! I’d like to say I did this on purpose this time, but it was a total measuring mistake. ;) Good thing I liked the way it looked!
I was losing light but took this one before the sun went down to show the new trim against the old wall color:
Instant charm and interest where there was none! OK, not instant. But once you know how to do this the project can be done in about 45 minutes. The three coats of paint takes a little longer than that. :)
You know how I love me some contrast – that old color was pretty but I wanted to make the room feel a little warmer and sophisticated. More on that soon, but here’s a peek at the new trim with the new wall color:
LOVE. This is the way to my heart. Chunky trim.
Here’s a comparison to show you the difference it makes!:
I can’t wait to show you the rest of the room! I made a few changes but this trim around the window is one of the biggest impacts. I am always pleasantly surprised at the difference it makes! I won’t be putting drapes up in here – I love the look of the window open now that it looks so pretty. :)
The removal of the old window sill is what used to intimidate me most, but it’s incredibly easy and quick to pull it up. The total cost to trim out this window was $20 – I had the tools and paint. Have you tried adding some trim around windows? If you don’t have window sills to start with this would be even easier and quicker!
**See how I’ve started adding similar trim around the doors in our home here and here.