February 12, 2012

The Impossible Curtains

This week has been the week of fail.  From a glass dish exploding in the apartment, to finding bugs in our cornmeal when I went to make pizza, to not being able to put screws into our bookcases so they wouldn't fall down, to finding a crack in one of our new glass pitcher... I think I just need to crawl into bed and start last week over. 

To add to my week of fail, I thought I'd try to add some curtain to our living room.  We have big windows (almost 14 feet across), so it's not an easy task.  And I didn't want to spend a bunch of money on it either!  Online there are lots of people who are using electrical metallic tubing (EMT) as a cheap way to make curtain rods.  You can get 10 feet of it for less than $2.  So the Hubby and I headed over to Home Depot to pick up a couple of supplies.  We bought 2 sets of piping cut to be 1/2 of our window, a bunch of brackets, screws, washers, and drapery hooks to use.  It cost us about $12 total. 

We get home and I immediately want to put them up.  The Hubby gets me to go out for Mexican first to celebrate our anniversary that was a few days ago.  Then it's back home with full stomachs to do hard labor!  That's when we remembered our ceilings are concrete... fail.  So I spend the next few hours trying to figure out what to use, but with the layout, you can only hang them from the ceiling.  I know a lot of people have used Command adhesive hooks for their curtains, but how was I going to hang that from the ceiling?!?!  A few hours later I realize that the strong part of those strips is the adhesive itself.  I put that up on the ceiling to hold the hooks we bought.  The Hubby keeps saying how it's not going to hold... what does he know... it ends up working perfectly!  I also found out in the process that our ceilings are not even.  I put two sets on each end of the bars (so two on each end and four in the middle). 

Oh, then I tried to add the curtains... The hooks I got were too small for the size of the rod.  I had those little rings that open (with a hinge)... I don't know what they're called, but you find them in officey stuff.  I sewed the curtains onto them and hooked that around the curtain.  And finally, voila!!!  At least the curtains were easy to sew as I just made a small hem on each end of the fabric and called it a day.  Some of them probably aren't even, but no one will be looking at it that closely!

The new curtains looking out the window.  It's too bright out to see them though!

One of the end curtains.

Here they are with the blinds closed.  You can see it all a bit better here!

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