Made-em-myself Curtains

After getting a great deal on some great printed fabrics from Premier Fabrics in Madison, MS ($9.99 per/yard)....I got to work making some cafe curtains for our living room and dining room.

Here are my fun fabrics.  

Here are the before and afters for the living room...

the LIVING ROOM

Before:

(curtain panels from ikea, white faux wood blinds, jumbled tv wire situation)

After:

I removed all the faux wood blinds, and put bamboo blinds on the large window.  (Woop woop for the bamboo blinds garage sale steal!)  I added the chevron print cafe curtains to the large window, which are hung on a oil rubbed bronze metal cafe curtain rod, with clip-on cafe rings.  So far I haven't been hugely happy with the metal rings, because the curtains move around a little TOO much, and it's hard to ever spread them evenly.  The metal also doesn't have the homeyness that I want in our living room.   I may go back later and try to figure out a different treatment at the top of these panels.  For my little window, I used a floral print that matches the cafe curtains I made for the the dining room.  I think this is a good way of relating the two conjoining rooms, and not letting the living room get too matchy-matchy.  

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Dressing up this window really brought some color to the mantle, which is much needed since we chose to put our tv over the mantle instead of artwork.  I want this window to draw the eye, instead of the tv.  

There have been a few other improvements as well...

Before:

(one pretty lamp)

After:

(two is bettah)

Before:

(jumbly tv mess)

After:

(wireless wonder)

Way to Go, Chris!  He worked so hard on this.  All the wiring goes through the wall, up through the ceiling, and down into a hall closet where all of our components live, i.e. W.C.C. (Walker Command Center, figure A).  We use a radio frequency remote to control everything.  

figure A

So that's the living room.

As for our dining room...

Our Dining room really needs some help.  I'm just not happy with it lately.  I'm brainstorming completely re-arranging it.  But here are the curtains at least.

Before:

(Again, curtain panels are cheapo from IKEA)

After:

I opted for no blinds instead the white faux wood blinds.  I'm hoping to stumble upon another set of bamboo blinds for cheap!  I used pinch pleat hooks and tape to make these pinch pleat curtains, which was an awesome cheater move!  I left the cafe curtains a little long for a more luxurious feel, since there is nothing below them.  

  ************************

I'm very pleased with the results from my little curtain project.  I went ULTRA cheap, with my IKEA curtain panels, and so I think adding interest with cafe curtains is a great way to get a big effect on a budget.  

So, if you're on a budget, use your cheaper fabric on your panels (more yardage required), and then you can go back later and use your nicer fabric to spice things up with some accent curtains (less yardage required).  Then later, as another thought, I hope to add some trim to my panels for more interest.  

I have loved having these cafe curtains because it allows us to not use our blinds at all.  So we can look out our windows and see the outdoors, yet we have enough privacy that anyone outside our house could only see us from the neck up.  So that's right, Chris...you CAN walk around in your boxers now without me jumping up to shut all the blinds!  

Thanks for reading.