window safety

Our house has tons of windows. One wall in our living/dining room is almost entirely windows, but the weird thing is, there are only four windows in the whole house that open, and one is painted shut. There is one in the kitchen that opens, one in our family room downstairs, one in Alden's room (the non-functioning one), and one in Tula's room.

It hasn't really been a problem yet because our house is very shaded and is cool all the time. We also have several doors that open onto our deck if we need a little more breeze. Our big concern is that the windows that do open, swing out. There are no screens, and no child-safety locks. That's a problem because our house is built on a very steep slope, so although the corner of Tula's room is at ground level, there is about a twelve foot drop outside the portion of the window that opens.

The latch on her window is particularly hard to maneuver, but I'm not relying on that because just when you think something is impossible for a 2-year-old, they figure out a way to surprise you. Since this situation would have much more serious consequences than say, figuring out how to lock oneself in the bathroom, I think it's imperative that we come up with a solution to prevent a dangerous tumble out of the window.

I'd like something that doesn't look like a jail, so vertical wood slats are out, but I don't want to block off the whole window. My idea is to frame in some sort of wooden geometric pattern with holes large enough to reach through to the latch to open the window, but small enough that a thirty pound little girl can't wiggle out. I found these modern headboards from West Elm that have the kind of look I'm going for:

And here's one of their headboards that I cropped and shrunk to mock-up the actual window:


Now I just have to figure out how to actually build and install something. Has anyone ever seen this type of thing done?