I’m about to pull them down–18 months after I hung them up–so I wanted to let you all know that I think that’s about as long as they last. I am going to replace them, and they are so inexpensive that I think it’s well worth it.
The panels are $3.99 a pair (usually $4.99 but they’re on sale right now) from IKEA, and they’re called Lill. If you don’t live near an IKEA, you actually buy them through Amazon prime. {Here} is the link (affiliate link).
After 18 months, this is how they look:
They’re definitely showing the effects of two springs/summers of pollen and weather! Granted my entire backyard looks awful right now–this is February, after all–but they are not going to make it through another summer.
The tops have collected cobwebs and yes, even dead bugs–yuck! But in some ways, that’s testament to their function, right? They’re meant to keep the bugs out, after all.
I talk about how I hung them in this post, but basically, I just used a staple gun. You could also hang them on tension rods, and that would definitely make them easier to take down and wash. In fact, I have these same panels in our master bedroom, and they wash beautifully. I have a front loading HE washer and I wash them on cold, then hang them to dry on the curtain rods while they’re still wet.
I’m going to take mine down using a staple remover, but I’m going to have to toss them instead of washing them, since they’re pretty ragged at the bottom. They blow on top of the roof every time there’s a storm (see the photo above) and that’s been hard on them.
Bottom line, though, for under $20 and probably less than 30 minutes of my my time, they have lasted great over the past year and half. Just be sure that you plan on this being a project that you have to redo every few years!
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