Neighbors, we now have curtains. You're welcome.

November 2011

We spent the remainder of 2011 doing small but totally satisfying projects.  This was going to be our first real Christmas in the house and I was a little excited, o hell, I was VERY excited.  But along with the excitement came the o my goodness feeling.  We had nothing in the way of Christmas decor.  Everything had to be bought: tree stand, tree lights, ornaments, general all over flare.  In preparation for this we stepped back our remodeling.

We decided in November to tackle a small project which should have been done when we first moved in... curtains.  Yes, we have now lived in the house over a year and a half and currently own/hung zero window treatments.  This makes for some interesting moments.  I change in our upstairs hallway, to avoid changing in our curtainless bedroom, we also try to monitor our family room tv viewing since there are no curtains, HBO you're out.  I know to many people this is unimaginable, but honestly, I kinda hate curtains.   I love a nice open window letting our little bit of Portland sunlight in. It's also super annoying to daily open and close them, which means sometimes they are left closed even when you want them open... big bummer.

But the point of the story is, we finally got curtains for the family room and dining room.  Since the rooms open on to each other we decided that we should use the same ones in both rooms.  This limited our choices dramatically since the rooms were different colors.  We went towards solid neutrals.  We finally decided on some khaki grommet type neutral numbers from Plow and Hearth.  They were super cheap and apparently they have thinsulate in them.  Apparently, when we pull them they can actually act like a layer of insulation... I am not quite sure about this but it was worth a shot with our drafty windows. 

I ordered the curtains and then...they sat in the guest room for over a month.  The next step was picking curtain rods. This was also quite a process.  To start I hate finials, so we had to find curtain rods without finials on them.  I finally found ones I really liked at Pottery Barn.  They were more than I wanted to spend, but they seemed really solid and didn't have a huge ball, or ornate spike in site.  After a couple of misfires I ordered them online and went about ironing 4 7'x5' panels.  Phew.

We decided one Sunday to install them.  This was a bit of trial.  Since I chose grommet top curtains and these rods had integrated brackets we had to hang the curtains on the rod and then screw it into the wall.  So much for cleaning them once a year.... Since we had plaster walls we had to carefully predrill and then install some plastic anchors into the wall.  This is definitely a two person job.  The rod has to be held, curtains rangled and the screws often did not exactly go in 'easily.'  In the end, we got pretty good at it and we stood back to look at our handy work.  Wow, it did make a difference!  The rooms felt more warm and lived in.  I now had to admit we might need curtains.  I am also sure the neighbors were very happy.