Wall of curtains

July 25th, 2008


( hospital curtain track systems are great and sassy!)

I’ve been curious about how to make a wall of curtains in my living room to block the harsh afternoon light and cover up the two oddly shaped windows. I bought a small section (single track rail, ceiling mounts and the plastic roller things) of the Ikea KVARTAL curtain rail system to test it out and see if it would be a good and aesthetically pleasing solution.

So I want something kind of like this…


(via: finery & frippery)

Apartment Therapy has a great post about ceiling mounted curtain tracks – with some very useful links in the comments section.

FILED UNDER: windows

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Window (shock) treatments

July 24th, 2008


I went to the big orange – Home Depot silly – to find out how much it would cost to outfit the Brick House with some solar shades. Wowwwweee its pricey. To cover all my stupid custom windows with delicious white roller solar shades would end up costing about $3000 (without this months advertised 15% discount of course).

Surprise, surprise, I don’t have $3000 just laying around burning a hole in my pocket. Yes, the shades would save me money on my energy bill and be great looking – but I don’t think that I’m going to get any real money out of the Brick House due to its questionable location – so I don’t want to invest too heavily in upgrades I can’t take with me.

Being cheap, I went to the big blue and yellow – Ikea you scamp – and checked out their selection of roller shades. Oh by the way – I hate hate HATE blinds (vertical or horizontal) or shutters – yuck. So I think simple roller shades are my only option besides curtains…or roman shades…but I kind of hate those too…

Meet:

ENJE Roller Blind – $24.99 (34″ x 98″)

TUPPLUR roller shade – $19.99 (32″ x 77″)


I bought one of each to test them out. The winner is Enje – I guess. The Tupplur shade is good for privacy – its much less see through but poorly made and cheap ugly vinyl with a cheap ugly white pull chain that looks like it was made as an elementary school toy (or maybe its just all the warning pictures of choking babies giving me that impression). So its ass is getting returned – pronto.

For mere aesthetics I like the Enje roller blind more, but it has its issues. Its pretty see through at night but opaque during the day. The hanging hardware sticks way out to the side – so it fits in my 34″ window, but there is an inch gap between the window frame and fabric shade – so only the glass is just so slightly covered. I have to mount it to the inside top of my frame so the unit hangs about an inch below were I would want it to. And for some reason my test roller sits a little crooked. Its probably my crooked house, but I demand symmetry!

On the plus side – I think you could really easily cut these Enje shades to a custom size! For my weird sized windows this would be great and I bet you could replace the fabric if you got really fancy – which of course I’ve already started thinking about. So they can be customized pretty easily and I could to do my whole house for only a few hundred dollars. It was pretty easy to install as well, which is always a plus.

FILED UNDER: decorating, windows

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Thrifty!

July 19th, 2008

I found a few new thrift stores and have been waiting to check them out since they have pretty limited hours. I also stopped by the old standards…

Woman’s Guild, $10 total. Love these ashtrays. The lids come off for handy cigarette storage.

Salvation Army/Angelview Thrift. $??? – I totally forget how much I paid for these. Like a few bucks each. Must add them to my vintage ceramic owl collection, which is a bit out of control.

Salvation Army, $3.55 – but it was 25% off day! Pink and gold vase.

Woman’s Guild, $5. BIG ashtray. I need to smoke more.

Woman’s Guild, $1 for both. Jonathan Adler-esqe stoneware. Love the scary happy snail with horns, and the big bottomed lion.

Salvation Army, $2 – plus 25% sale. Little art deco mirror. I’m hoping it will inspire the art deco makeover in the bathroom…

Random garage sale, $3. Awesome cork and teak lamp with a horribly stained lamp shade…I negotiated switching the shade with another beautiful and PERFECT white nubby drum shade that was on a random ugly lamp. They did it! And then at the last minute (while I’m paying) they remembered that they couldn’t switch them since some lady bought the ugly lamp already, so they took the shade back and knocked $2 off the price. Oh well…but who leaves stuff they bought at a garage sale? It was a lamp not a dresser or something heavy. WEIRD.

Salvation Army, $20 – 50% furniture sale. I’m angry looking at these.

There were 2 sets – the 2 chairs above and a small table and then another set of 4 matching chairs (without arms) and a big table (that should have been mine) for only $30. I asked for pricing, negotiated, and agreed to buy all the chairs – 6 total and the big table for $50.

Then a thrift store nightmare of disorganization happened. Some stupid horrible family said that they were buying the 4 chairs and the big table even though I had worked it all out with the manager. Then I threw a total hissy fit – like a 4 year old – and the stupid store gave the big set to the family because they have kids or whatever and gave me the two chairs because I’m just one person and I was being “selfish”. Stupid breeders.

**That awful family also bought an old purple and gray Laz-e-Boy, a southwestern style forest green couch, and a chipped MDF bookshelf. Obviously they don’t care about style – so that beautiful set of faux bamboo swiveling patio chairs will be destroyed by their little devil spawn. Bastards.

FILED UNDER: thrifting

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