Elongated Panels

You may have noticed a little change from my accessorized post...

To my before & after post...

Curtains! What a difference they make. I initially figured that hanging these curtains would be as easy as it's always been before... and boy was I wrong. As you can see above, our bedroom has a normal window with a smaller window on top. I knew I wanted to cover both of them with curtains, because my stupid eyes have pretty severe over reactions to light in the morning. Well, in the morning as well as always, but particularly in the morning. Specifically, once it gets bright out, I have nightmares that I'm going blind, and when I finally wake up I realize it's just because there's sunshine coming in the window. Thus, the need to cover both windows. That, or think I'm going blind every morning.

So, in order to cover both, I needed to find curtains that were 108" long. Curtains are made in that length, but 84" and 96" are much more common. I couldn't find any I liked, except for a few from West Elm and Anthro that were around $100 per panel. What am I, rich? That would be over a thousand dollars if I wanted to put curtains on all of the windows in the house. I of course also considered making my own, but I couldn't find any fabric I liked either. Womp Womp.

Alas, I came up with a solution. It wasn't as quick as that sentence makes it sound... I seriously agonized over this for weeks. First step of problem solving... hang the curtain rod.

Second step: hang Target curtains. These curtains were almost perfect for a couple of reasons. First, the room was feeling really masculine and cold between the colors and the stripes on the duvet, so the pattern helped soften things up. Second, the color was perfect. I wanted something yellow to brighten things up, but it had to be a very slightly mustardy yellow because the yellow on the duvet isn't a pure, bright yellow, and these happened to be the perfect color. Third, they had grommets, which meant they would slide easily on the curtain rod which was important because it's waaay up there. What kept them from being perfect? They were only 84".

Solution: add a panel on the bottom. I used my seam ripper to take out the bottom seam so I could attach the second panel.

I used some white curtains from Target that were the same type of fabric and just pinned them to the bottom of the yellow ones.

Then I sewed them on and sewed hems on the white ones to make the edges match up.

And ta da! 

Now, did you notice in the picture above that a second curtain rod snuck up there? Because the thing is, having those pretty yellow curtains wasn't going to block enough light, so I got some "blackout" curtains to help them out. These curtains aren't actually blackout because they still let light in (I used to have true blackout ones that had a thin coat of plastic on the back to make them opaque), but they block the majority of it.  

I initially planned on hiding the blackout ones behind the yellow ones during the day, but I actually like how they look peeking out from the middle. They look intentionally layered... as if that was my plan all along. Wait, wasn't it? 

I'm really pleased with how they turned out, even if it was an excruciating process. This post may not have made it sound all that bad, but it took me a couple of weeks to figure out my plan, and about 15 hours to execute it. Yep, that's a ridiculous amount of time. I can't even talk about all of the specific bumps along the way because it's seriously too traumatic to relive it.

Bonus: I got a pretty solid workout going up and down the ladder once every 5 minutes for 15 hours. I was sore for 3 days.

Another bonus: I think the curtains make the room look way taller and more finished in general.

Last bonus: the vanity was looking really random and out of place before the curtains were hung, and the color looked too warm compared to all of the other furniture. Now that the curtains are up and bring a lot of warmth to that side of the room, I think the vanity fits right in. I don't think I'm going to refinish it afterall, but I am still planning to get new knobs. The current ones are too brassy and traditional and they blend right into the wood.

So, what do you think? You should comment and let me know! I talked to about 80 people at the wedding who said they read the blog... and yet none of you ever leave your thoughts! Is it because you don't make it to the very end? Should I start putting this sentence at the top? Are you just looking at the pictures? Should I make a picture that says comment? Come on, yall!