When we installed the new binds in the kitchen a couple of weeks ago, we had to take down the old curtain rod that had been there so there would be room to mount the shades.  The old curtain rod was one of the standard white metal ones that was too small for the rod pocket of the valance I’d hung there and I’d been thinking about getting something different anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal that it had to come down.

After we started looking at our options for decorative rods, though, we quickly realized that there weren’t many options with small enough finials on the ends to fit between the end of the window and the corner of the room.  The only rod we found that was long enough for the window, had small enough ends to fit past the corner, and had brackets with enough clearance for the shades was this Allen + Roth “sheer rod set” at Lowe’s.  I saw it online first and was pretty excited to also find it at our local store, so I bought a curtain rod and a couple sets of the clip rings in the iron bronze finish last weekend.

When I got the curtain rod home and started unpacking it to hang it on the wall, I was pretty disappointed in the quality.  The finish flaked off of one of the mounting brackets as I was unpacking it.  We decided it wasn’t worth the hassle of exchanging it, so we went ahead and mounted it with the now shiny silver side facing up where we figured no one would ever see it.  We also figured out pretty quickly that the finish scratches off of the rod really easily just during the process of getting it hung because you have to slide the entire length of the rod through the mounting brackets and the brackets are rough enough on the inside where the set screws go to take the finish off.  If we had it to do again, I think putting a piece of tape on the inside of the brackets before sliding the curtain rod through would have made a big difference.

Once we had the curtain rod installed, I hung the valance from the clip rings (which the finish was also flaking off of), but had terrible luck adjusting it so that it didn’t look like a short shower curtain hanging above the kitchen windows.  Today I finally decided the rings had to go and took the whole thing down again to get the rings off and hang the curtain directly on the rod instead.  Because the mounting brackets are solid circles around the poles, I wound up having to cut holes in the rod pocket of the valance to accommodate the mounting brackets, but once I got it all positioned right on the rod again, I think it looks a lot better.  I’m not sure if I didn’t spend enough time on it or didn’t have enough clips or what, but I wasn’t able to get it to look anything like any of the pictures I’ve seen that I thought looked good … or even as good as what you see on the home shows on tv.  What a disappointment!

I think next time we’re in the market for a new curtain rod, we’ll be trying a different brand, but at least we have curtains up in the kitchen again … and it’s nice to not see the tops of the shades anymore …

Filed Under: Decorating

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2 thoughts on “New Curtain Rod, Same Curtains

  1. Matthew says:

    I am thinking of installing something similar to this, how far off the wall do these project? That is a big concern for me in what I am wanting to do.

  2. Sarah says:

    The brackets that came with this curtain rod hold it about 4″ from the wall and they aren’t adjustable. A lot of the other, more substantial-looking curtain rods we saw had adjustable brackets that could give the curtain rod anywhere from about 4 to 8 inches of clearance. The JCPenney website is pretty good about giving exact specifications for length, clearance, size of finials, etc. for all of their curtain rods, so that might be a good place to start looking …

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