Made in the Shade

We live in the country. We live in a barn...for real...well, sort of anyway. We have a huge metal shop building with 3/4 of it as my husband's business and the rest is our house. I know...sounds a little weird, but when you are in my house,  you don't know it's inside a shop. Anyway, one of the things that we did not do when we built, was build a porch for our house. Mostly because we had originally thought that we would build a house separate from the building and we didn't want to spend the extra at the time. Now, we have decided we kind of like the idea of staying where we are and adding on a porch, maybe an extra bedroom later, those sorts of things.
Anyway, to make a long story a little shorter, we have a ginormous playhouse that my husband built for our kids (only one kid then) when we moved in three years ago and it is the only place that we could even begin to shade until we add on the metal porch (which is, if you know anything about metal buildings, not a cheap endeavor). Yes, we have trees....small trees that hope to grow up someday. And, the east side of our building does not have a door from the house to it nor is it in the fenced yard.
We'd talked about using the space under the playhouse as a patio area....only problem is that the most open side of it faces west, which as you may know, is the hottest direction to be facing on a summer evening.

So, armed with a cordless drill borrowed from my neighbor (who lives 1 1/2 miles away), some laundry line rope, hooks, two fabric shower curtains, and 20 drapery ring clips, I went to work to make a shade that could be pulled back or taken down easily if needed.

Here's what happened:

 This is before I started...I didn't even pick up the Tonka trucks (:

 Since I was being "She-Woman" and doing this by myself, there are not lovely pictures of me trying to hold a huge DeWalt cordless drill on a step stool above my head to do this...that was the hardest part of the job.

  Looks a little like actual outdoor curtains, but WAY cheaper....the entire project only cost around $50 and half that was the shower curtains. The only thing I need to do now, is figure out a way to weight the bottom because we live in "Oooooooklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plain...." and whips around everything in it's path!