Living room drapes

Finally! Drapes in my living room!

I've been living with too-small sheers in the living room window since we moved back into the house. And for the past several weeks they've been worse than usual as I've only had one of them hanging.

Back in January I bought the material for drapes. The fabric is a pale silvery grey, with embroidered flowers in charcoal and taupe.

I procrastinated about making them for months. I was feeling kind of intimidated about sewing them, and was especially dreading putting in the grommets to hang them. So I waited for my talented sister to get home from her winter travels so I could rope her into helping me. Wonderful sister that she is, she actually took the material away and made them for me for my birthday!

This morning my sister in law, niece and I ran in the Sporting Life 10K race and the rest of the family came into the city for brunch after to celebrate Mother's Day. My sister came bearing delicious muffins and my new drapes. Did I mention how wonderful she is?

After everyone left I  really wanted to take a nap 'cause I'd been up since 6 am, but I wanted to get the drapes hung even more. And seeing how it was Mother's Day, my wish was Alan's command.

Well, not really, but he did help me out without complaining or getting grouchy when we ran into a problem.

We pulled down the old curtain rod. You can appreciate how off center the window in the living room is, and why I decided to go wall to wall with the new drapes.

We got the outer brackets hung, and then realized that we had a big problem since the rod has to sit across the trim at the top of the window. The three brackets that were included with the rod were all the same size, of course, but the window trim is a few centimeters thick. We couldn't attach the central support for the rod, and even if we could figure out an alternative support for the center, there isn't enough space between the rod and the trim for the curtains to slide.

There are two possible solutions for this problem (1) build out the brackets that attach to the wall at either end, or (2) find longer brackets for the two ends. Solution 2 seems easier than trying to figure out some way to shim out the brackets from the wall, so a trip down to Designer Fabrics is in my near future.

Since we had the rod ready to go and I was dying to see how the drapes looked, we hung them up. I just stuck a long screw in the center for the rod to rest on. While there's no space for them to slide closed in front of the window, they need to be bundled at the side for a few days anyway to make sure that the pleats are all regular and lined up. 

They look gorgeous. They add some much needed depth to the room, and it's amazing how much cozier they make the living room feel.

Next up - figuring out how to reface the ugly 70's brick on the fireplace and a new area rug.