Curtain Hurtin’

I thought it would be a good idea to end the week with a bang, so to speak, and touch on the painful subject of window coverings. I find it painful, at any rate.

The first home we purchased did indeed come fully equipped with widow coverings. In one particular room there were cheap 1″ metal blinds, and they also happened to be pink. Normally, I like pink but this particular shade verged on a somewhat disconcerting flesh color, that I found to be be, well, creepy. So of course those had to go as soon as possible. As this particular room was in the back of the house, I was able to get away with buying inexpensive sheer panels from Big Lots. The bad news, however, was that particular room was really a glorified patio, so it was basically all windows. Even these inexpensive panels ended up costing me a pretty penny, as I bought two for each window, and that room was large.

My next house came equipped throughout with nice-looking two-inch faux-wood white blinds, which I can’t complain about at all. However, this house also sported poofy eighties valences in Miami Vice approved colors of peach, sea-foam green, and teal. These were in remarkably good condition considering that they must have been installed early on in the house’s history. It was built in 1986, and on the outside looked exactly like the house in the movie “Poltergeist” (except for the color). All I had to do there was take down the poofy valances, and the windows looked great.

Our current house, though less then two years old when we bought it, was already a foreclosure. It was in great shape and the price was certainly right. However, in lieu of curtains or blinds all the windows were covered with accordian-pleated paper. Every time I wanted a little sunshine and fresh air, I had to laboriously pleat the paper then clip it on the corners with clothes pins. Not very convenient, and sort of strange.

So, as you can see I’ve experienced all the pain that window coverings can dish out. When facing a window-covering crisis, most Frugals first instinct is to immediately consider the lowest-cost options first, and all these pretty much boil down to “make it yourself”. So here are some of the things I have done in this basically “curtainless” house to try to keep window-covering costs down.

Spare Bedroom 1: This spare bedroom happens to be at the front of the house, so was high on my curtain-making priority list. This home owner’s association has very limited rules on what can be showing out your front windows; to make it easy on myself I decided to stick with the white theme. However, I didn’t happen at the time to have any “free” white cloth on hand to make curtains.

Some Frugals recommend using sheets for curtains (RED ALERT: THE FOLLOWING IS FRUGAL HERESY) but I never want to do this because bed sheets as curtains look, to me, like bed sheets as curtains. So, naturally, I decided to turn my old duvet into curtains. This was pretty easy for a lazy seamstress like myself because all the seams and borders were already sewn. I only had to rip it apart and attach rod pockets in the back. I actually had sheer panels left over from my first house, so I put those up too (for the White Curtain Rule). Yay! One room done!

Spare Bedroom 2 (aka My Husband’s Office): This room looks out onto the side yard, so color is not important. This is not a floor-to-ceiling window like Spare Bedroom 1, so an easier problem to solve. Luckily I happened to actually have blue cloth curtains that I had from my first house. They were the perfect size for this window. Also, my husband likes his office to be on the dark side, so the dark blue of these coverings were perfect for his “decor” preference.

Kitchen Window: Here is a perfect example of how Lazy I am. This kitchen is painted brown. It’s not the worst color in the world, but I don’t like it much. Instead of painting it, though, (which would not be too expensive but would require lots of energetic endeavor) I decided to try to work whatever curtains I might end up with around this brown color.

This window took a lot of time to get covered because I could never find just the right thing at the magical right price. About a year into living in Texas, I made a visit to my family out in California. My sister took me to the downtown fabric district where every sort of fabric imaginable is available, and at very good prices too (you can even bargain, which I’m not too good at - but my sister is a wiz at it). I managed to find something that would coordinate with my brown kitchen, and still be pretty. This cloth was very wide, too.

I even made these with my sister’s help while I was out in CA; I packed them in my suitcase and hemmed them when I got home. These came out great - lined, very heavy, and the material is pretty, but still manages to complement my brown walls. The cloth has a pattern of small sunflowers with dark brown centers.

It was hard matching up the vertical lines of sunflowers, and working with such big pieces of heavy cloth, but my sister is an experienced seamstress, and she helped me a lot with that.

Of course, I have more than three windows in my house, but I can see that this post is getting long (as usual) so I thought I’d just relate the highlights. As usual, I found that the best approach to a money-spending situation is to take my time. If I’m not in a hurry things usually work themselves out in a Frugal manner. True, I did have to live for quite a while with strange paper curtains hanging on my windows, but it was worth it. My patience paid off in the end, and now all my windows are covered, and in a satisfactorily frugal manner.

Well, Dear Readers, have a great Frugal weekend. I’ll see you on Monday.