Curtain Adventures

Honestly, who sells a house and takes the curtains?! One of the things I haven't discussed yet, is the windows in our house. Or more to the point, the total lack of curtains/blinds/anything to stop the neighbours seeing everything. When we bought the house it wasn't an issue for us, we discussed options for blinds and curtains, and basically agreed it was a good opportunity for us to choose something that we - or at least one of us - liked : )

I've been thinking though, who sells a house without at least some old blinds, or in this case, some flowery curtains from the 60's? The house was tenanted before it was sold, surely they had something then? All I can think is that whatever was previously used for modesty actually brought down the value of the house even further, which is really, really saying something.

When we moved in we realised it was a bit of an issue, but we managed for a few days just using some strategically balanced beach towels over the bedroom window. The rest stayed bare a while longer. The towels looked as trashy as they sound, but in our defence that window doesn't face the street, and disturbingly, one of our neighbours uses bright red sheets instead of curtains on every. single. window. *shudder* So by comparison our towels looked quite nice!

Before: Empty windows

I think we initially had visions of installing blinds in house particularly in the living areas, but at this stage the budget just wasn't going to stretch that far. Especially with the odd shapes of our windows - no two are the same. We agreed on curtains and last week charged down to Curtain Wonderland to see what we could get for as little coin as possible. It turns out that ready made (read: affordable) curtains don't come in the range of colours I expected. We (read: I) wanted some colour in the curtains to add some brightness to otherwise very pale rooms. Also, like with choosing the paint colour, I don't want too many neutral colours to clash against each other. I really wanted a very pale aqua colour, but the closest match we found at CW was quite a bright blue. Not exactly what I'm going for. So with our expectations set a bit lower we charged off to Spotlight. We had great luck: curtains in a nice (not earth shatteringly nice, but we're going for affordable first) duck egg colour. As we have two larger windows in the living and main bedroom, and two smaller windows in the dining and second bedroom, we're only using two sets of curtains all together. So for both sets on sale we paid $160, and another $100 or so for hooks and curtain rings.

After (but before splitting the curtains)

We used them with one curtain on each window, until our Sewing Guru (my Ma) came to visit with sewing machine in tow. She's a whiz and seems to be resigned to the fact that I'm not even capable of sewing a hem. It took a while to cut all the curtains, pin them and then sew the new hem in place, but my sister and I did what we could to help and it was so much cheaper than getting custom curtains, which we were quoted $600 each for. EACH! Ma also showed me how to pleat the curtains to make them look pretty (I seriously don't have a clue), and the final look is great and really fits in the house nicely. The colour is almost exactly what I wanted and I'm glad I took the advice of Sewing Guru and didn't choose curtains with patterned fabric, it's nice and simple this way and easy to accessorise with other colours if we choose to one day.

After we got the curtains finished, we also put our first hook in the wall for the clock (below). This is a big deal after so many rentals and making our pictures fit on the existing hooks in each house. It is actually super easy to use command hooks to stick on and remove when we leave a house, but it still felt soooo good to just decide where we wanted a hook and not ask for permission. My sister gave me this clock about eight years ago and it has probably been dragged to as many rentals since. It finally has it's very own hook (it doesn't have a battery yet though, if you're wondering about the interesting time on it, one thing at a time)! I'm also pretty sure that Mr Fox enjoyed an opportunity to use his (borrowed) drill.

Bad photo of the curtains, but you get the idea.

Meanwhile, we've been deciding how and when to deal with the fibro asbestos in the house. We can't afford to redo the whole kitchen yet, but we really need to fit the fridge into the room better, so this week we're having two walls in the kitchen removed, and the one fibro wall in our spare bedroom. Now it feels like the reno is really starting!