In my continued effort to really make our house look more lived in and homey, I knew that I needed to get some curtains up around the house. The most logical place to start with putting up curtains seemed to be in the living room/dining room since it really was a very bare room.
Since the furniture we have in there now isn't necessarily our "permanent" furniture, it was hard to decide which direction to go with the color and style of the curtains. My first instinct is to go with light and airy... like white or ivory or something like that. I knew that telling that to Trent would make him roll his eyes at me, though, since I want everything to be neutral colors these days and our walls are already a creamy, neutral color, so I had to come up with something a little different.
I wanted the curtains to be long enough for our high ceilings and wide enough to cover the wider windows at the front of the house. I also didn't want to spend a ton of money on finding curtains that were perfect. So my solution was to just make them myself! I searched Pinterest for weeks trying to find something I liked that was inexpensive and something I was able to do myself and I found lots of tutorials on Stenciling curtains. Like here and here and here. Even after I determined I could do the stenciling thing, I still had to find fabric to stencil. I figured my options were to buy fabric and cut it to size and then stencil it, find plain curtains in the right size and then stencil them, find a table cloth that was the right size and stencil that or, the option I chose, buy some drop cloths from Lowe's and use those to stencil to make my curtains. I saw this tutorial, and saw how great hers turned out, so I knew that I could do it and have it turn out great, too.
At Lowe's I purchased 2 - 9' by 12' drop cloths.
They were already the exact height that I wanted so they would be 4 inches from the ceiling and then touch the ground. The tricky part was getting them cut and then put back together in the right widths. We have two windows in our living room, one narrow window and one that is a lot wider.
(A picture of the windows from before we moved in)
I ended up cutting one of the drop cloths in half and the other into 4 pieces so I had the correct widths for the smaller window and then had to attach the two extra small pieces to the two halves to make those the correct widths as well.
I found the best way to cut the drop cloths in a straight line (I was just cutting them on the living room floor) was to start the cut where I needed it to be and then just ripping it the rest of the way.
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| The drop cloth before I cut it to size. |
After I had all my pieces, I then had to attach them where needed and hem the raw edges I had left. Since I have yet to own a sewing machine, I hemmed the fabric with Stitch Witchery.
After I had all my hemming done, I washed the drop cloths to make them less stiff and get the wrinkles out. This made some of my hemming come out (since I'm sure it wasn't 100% secure in every place to start with) so I had to redo it in a few places, but that was alright. This is where having a real sewing machine would have come in handy! When that was all done, it was the time to start stenciling. Thankfully, I had won a stencil from Cutting Edge Stencils in a giveaway on the blog, A Diamond in the Stuff, a while back so I didn't have to purchase one! I had intended to use it to stencil one of our dining room walls, but this little project got done first. We'll see if the dining room wall ever gets stenciled. I'm not so confident it will!
I put a plastic drop cloth down on the garage floor and made sure that it was tight and secure so it wouldn't move around. Having something under the drop cloth while stenciling is important so the paint that goes through the cloth doesn't cause it to stick and leave pattern on whatever surface you're working on. I then secured the drop cloth down to the plastic with painter's tape.
When it came to the stenciling, I poured paint into a double stacked paper plate with a high edge and used that to roll my foam roller in the paint. (I just used the leftover paint we had from other projects like this TV stand.) I then rolled the roller on a paper towel before starting to stencil on the drop cloth each time. (This is like they instruct you to do in the how-to section on the site my stencil came from so check that out for better detailed instructions.) This kept the paint from seeping under the stencil a bunch. I started in the top left corner and went down and then repeated until I was done. I then went back and did the edges.
It took me three nights after work to get the painting done. I needed to get them all done before the CPA party we were having at our house back at the beginning of June, so I was in a time crunch to get these and all of the other little things done. I was still stenciling the night before the party when my mom arrived to help us get ready!
I was very happy when I was finally done because my back hurt big time from bending over for so many hours. I think, in all, it took me between 10 and 12 hours to get just the stenciling done. A long time! But, now that it's done, I can say it was worth it... Not so sure I'd ever do it again, though! (Unless I had a big table I could work on or something! Or smaller curtains!)
I also didn't want to spend the money to buy new curtain rods... The previous owners left the rods up in the house, but they were a color that didn't match the rest of the fixtures throughout the main floor, so to make them match, I just spray painted them with a brushed nickel spray paint. They aren't perfect by any means (they may have been better if I had a little more time or patience), but no one would ever notice the imperfections, so they are wonderful in my book!
I used curtain hangers similar to the ones pictured below from Lowe's. They weren't the right color either, but I wasn't willing to spend more to get the right color, so I spray painted those as well. I probably could have gotten away with leaving them since you can't see them anyway, but it didn't hurt to paint them.
The last thing to do was just hang them up and enjoy! Thankfully my wonderful husband was willing to help me with the hanging! I have to say that I like them quite a bit. =) Like everything else I do, they aren't perfect and there are plenty of imperfections where some paint smudged or my stencil got off because the fabric wasn't straight or something, but I was able to fold the fabric to hide most of the major issues when I hung them up for real. And hopefully no one is looking that closely at them anyway! So here's some pictures of what the finished product looks like!
And here's the best I have for before and afters...
Yay for having some curtains! Now hopefully no one will notice that no other windows in our house have them quite yet. :) Someday maybe!
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In all, I spent $89.29 on my curtain-making supplies. This included 2 - 9x12 drop cloths, a dense foam roller and two replacement heads, curtain rod hooks (3 packs of 7), and 2 cans of spray paint for the curtain rods. So $90 and some time and effort, and now we have curtains!
Some similar store-bought options that I found online to compare prices are below. There obviously isn't anything that is exactly the same, so these are just close examples. The advantage of buying them from the store would be that they don't have many imperfections like mine do, but that's a small price to pay for the major moolah I saved by doing it myself. (it was even worth the time and the back ache!) If I had to the price for curtains like the ones below, I know for certain our windows would still be bare!
1 curtain panel that is 52" wide is $54.99. To get the width of my curtains, it would be about $300
1 - 50" panel is $82.99. To get the width of my curtains, it would be over $475
(they sure are pretty though!)
1 - 55" panel is $80. To get the same width of curtains I have would be over $400.
(These are only 96" as well, so they aren't perfect)
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LOVE!!! I wish I was as crafty as you .. there's NO way those would turn out as nice if I was in charge. They would look awesome in our bedroom, so send them our way. ;)
ReplyDeletethose curtains look amaaaazing! great job!
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