Living Room Curtains: The Big Reveal

I finally completed our living room curtains on Saturday. Check it out!

New Curtains!

First, the positives:

• All four panels are exactly the same length.
• The pattern matches panel-to-panel (the same way you would hang wallpaper).
• The thermal lining has had an immediate effect in keeping our living room warm.
• Drama! They add some desperately needed drama to our living room and makes it super cozy.
• Color! While our walls are still boring Sherwin Williams Dover White (standard apartment company paint), your eye is drawn from floor to ceiling by the bold orange.

There are some problems, however. As I mentioned in my last post, I somehow managed to cut the fabric too short and since I cut and sewed all four panels to the same dimensions, all four panels are 4" too short. I decided to cheat the length by folding the top hem only 3" instead of 5" and hanging the rod 2" down from the ceiling. Good solution, right? Well, it worked pretty well for the front window where the curtain gracefully grazes the floor (ignore the crooked curtain rod --a minor measurement error, which will be fixed soon). 

Front curtain gracefully touches the floor

The back window, however, lacks moulding to the right of the window, which forced me to install the rod bracket to the moulding above the window, basically at ceiling height. 

Rear window - no moulding to the right of the window

So, of course the curtain on the back window is about 4" too high above the floor and looks stupid. Seriously.

Rear window with 4" gap between bottom of curtain and floor

Solutions? The solution will be to get rings with clips from which to hang the curtains and the back window curtain will at least come closer to the floor. The front window rod brackets will have to be raised to account for the length that the rings and clips will add (the crookedness will be solved, too). Additionally, the rings/clips will allow for the panels to fold nicely and hopefully open more, which will let in more natural light without resorting to using tiebacks (a throwback to the era when pickles on toothpicks were the height of sophistication). (Yes, that was a Bridget Jones reference.)

Here's a few more of the front window. 

Cooper loves that he has direct viewing access to the street (he's no longer dependent on us to raise the blinds for him). Talk about eyes on the street! He's like a nosy little old lady, constantly looking out the window to see what the neighbors are doing.

Pardon the mess of dog toys on the floor