Curtain Drama

Keith and I have been up late every night tackling house projects, prepping to get our house on the market.  It was about midnight on Tuesday and we were both working on these blinds in our room and I felt as though we have come full circle as we moved into our house November 18 of 2006 and at that time we spent many late nights working on projects.  (of course that was much easier pre-babies).  

Here is a project we are kicking ourselves we didn't do sooner!  Sorry, not the best pictures, but much better!  But this project reminded much like most house projects, which basically falls under "it will work on the third attempt"!

So now I am going to ramble on about how much I dislike window treatment projects, which is probably why it took 4 years for this one! So for this round, we got the blinds at home depot, these are great because they will cut them to size for you (thank you Tahlia for telling me about them) and they are price very reasonable.  We went to Home Depot with our boys who really don't like staying in the carts anymore.  There was ONE guy who cuts the blinds, the one guy who said it would just be a few minutes after he helps some people.  About 25 minutes later we gave up and went home.  BIG WASTE OF TIME!  Keith went back the next day without us and got them.  

Now for the curtains, that part went well and I actually didn't have to make a second trip, but the curtain rod!  I had to buy FOUR to get the right one.  

Curtain Rod #1 

This was brushed nickel, which would match most finishings in our room, but when I opened the curtains, I found all the rings were a bronze color. 

Curtain Rod #2

I liked this one, it was black with cool finials.  But once we got the blinds up, we learned that hardware that holds the rod needed to be a little over 3 inches off the wall to accommodate for the blinds, this ended up being about 1 1/2 inches.

***Trip to Pottery Barn to attempt to buy hardware from them, though they price them separately, they will not sell them without the rod.  Since we will not be the owners of this curtain rod for long, a Pottery Barn rod was not an option.

Curtain Rod #3 & #4

Back to Target for about the 5th time this week.  I bought both of these at the same time, knowing one probably wouldn't work.  

I opened my favorite first, which was black with cool finials.  But, somebody had purchased this, boxed it up and returned it without the hardware!!  Are you kidding me???  But I wasn't surprised because this was the second time this happened to me.

So luckily #4 was a keeper. 

So I have two other curtain horror stories...

Our kitchen curtains, after bringing home about 15 options, I finally picked one.  We pulled out one panel to base the height of the rod, then I spent like an hour ironing it, then we went to hang them and it turned out it was a misfit!  The color was slightly different than the other panel and it was 83" instead of 84".  And we had no plans to re-hang the rod.  So I had to return the panel to Bed Bath and Beyond, get a new, iron it AGAIN and now they bunch a little on the floor.  

Our living room curtains had a misfit panel as well, which we got at Pottery Barn, so you would think they would have it right!  So once again, I had to return an ironed panel, get a new one and iron it again.  Did I mention I hate ironing almost as much as Keith hates hanging curtain rods.  

So a few lessons to takeaway from this...

1.  If you plan to sell your house in the next year or two, start your projects now and enjoy the updates!

2.  When buying curtain panels, make sure they are the same color and length, despite what the package says