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 …

Slowly, but surely, we’re covering up our bare windows at least enough that the neighbors can’t watch everything we do at night.  Over the last few days, we finally got around to installing the blinds I ordered several weeks ago for the laundry room and the bathroom on the third floor.  It’s so nice to feel like we have a little privacy now!

For the laundry room, I ordered custom Levolor Mark I Cordless aluminum blinds to match the ones we have in the other bedroom that faces the front of the house.  They went up without too much difficulty, but the mounting brackets are one of the trickiest designs I’ve ever seen.  I think we may have problems when it comes time to take them down.  They’re spring loaded and the blind is hung by clipping the front of the head rail on to the bracket and then pushing back to compress the spring enough that the back of the head rail can clip on.  We learned the hard way with a couple of the blinds in the other bedroom, though, that if you don’t push just right to release the blind when taking it down, the front of the headrail can become clipped in the wrong place making it about impossible to get down.  I’m not sure what the reason is for this design – we’ve ordered other shades from Levolor in the past and they’ve come with much more normal, easy to operate mounting brackets.  Hopefully, though, we won’t have any reason to take the shades down in the near future.  Besides the awkward brackets, though, I like the shades a lot.  They stack pretty small at the top of the window and could easily hide behind curtains (if we ever put any up) and they provide some much needed privacy for the bathroom/shower that’s connected to the laundry room … although I’m sure our neighbors will miss watching us walk around in towels in the morning.

For the bathroom on the third floor, I ordered a Natural Basswood blind (in white) from JCPenney.  The bathroom is tucked into one of the dormers and it’s a rather awkward space to start with.  To be able to fit the plumbing in for a toilet, it sits on a small step and the window is nearly floor to ceiling.  To make it worse, the shade that was there before (I forgot to take a picture before we took it down) was a pleated lace shade that could easily be seen through and it wasn’t quite wide enough for the window.  All of these things combined made this a bathroom that no one liked to use.  The new blind was easy to install, fits the window perfectly, has a much cleaner look, and provides a lot more privacy than what we had before.  It’s still a funny little bathroom, but it’s a lot nicer to have the option of privacy now.

I ordered new roman shades for our kitchen last weekend and we spent yesterday afternoon putting them up.  The roman shades I ordered were the Cape Cod shades from JCPenney in the Golden Oak color.  Because we were concerned about keeping the appearance consistent between these shades and others on the front of our house, I also ordered privacy liners from Target.

The privacy liner is velcroed to the top of the shade

Installing the privacy liners on the back of the roman shades was the first thing we did yesterday.  It was pretty simple.  We laid the shades out on the floor with the back facing up and then placed the liner over the top of the shade so that it was positioned how we’d want it when it was attached.  The liners are just a white sheet of fabric with battons at various intervals down the length.  Based on some feedback I’d read on the Target website and a comment in the instructions that came with them, I decided to iron them before attaching them to the shade to give them a less wrinkled appearance from the outside.  The liners are then attached to the back of the roman shade with velcro at the top of the shade and some plastic clips along the length of the shade.  The instructions said to attach the velcro to the top of the

Plastic clips attach the liner to the shade.

back of the shade and then secure it with some tacks that were provided.  Our shade didn’t have a good place to attach the velcro on the back of the shade, so we opted to attach it to the top of the headrail instead.  We also decided not to tack the velcro in because positioning it on the headrail seemed like it would keep the liner in place just fine.  The rest of the liner then attached to the shades with the plastic clips provided, which clipped the liner to the strings on the back of the shade at various intervals.  It only took about 5 minutes a shade to install the liner and I think it was worth it.  They look about like white sheets from the outside, but they do make the window treatments look more neutral, so I think it was worth it to put them up – I think we’d notice seeing the wooden color from outside a lot more and not like it.

The kitchen windows with privacy liners on the shades.

The mounting brackets for the roman shades.

Installation of the shades wasn’t too bad either.  We did an outside mount, but wound up not mounting the shades too much higher than the windows.  I was initially concerned about the fact that the shades were a standard 72″ long while our windows are only 53″ long, but it turns out that it looks pretty natural for roman shades to not be lowered completely, so we decided just to go with it and not try to shorten them or mount them higher to compensate.  The blinds are hung with two brackets that mount into the window trim and provide bolts for the shade to be secured to using a wing nut.  The brackets and nuts provide some room for adjustments as far as centering the shade on the window and even straightening it a little.  Overall, installation of the blinds was pretty easy.  It took longer than we thought it should (as always), but there wasn’t anything difficult about it.

The new kitchen shades!

As part of the installation, we had to remove the curtain we’d had up in the kitchen before because the supports for the curtain rod were in the way of where the blinds needed to be mounted, so they haven’t gone back up yet.  I think we still need a valance of some type, but I’m planning to get another curtain rod that can be mounted a little higher (probably above the windows) so it won’t be in the way of the shades.  I need to find something that has enough clearance for the blinds to be underneath the valance and not interfere with it.  We’re also limited because the windows are right up next to the corner of the room and most of the curtain rods that are long enough to span all three windows have pretty big finials on each end that won’t fit.  I found these on the Lowe’s website that I kind of like, but there’s not much information posted about them, so I need to go to the store to see if I can figure out how big the finials actually are and how much clearance the curtain rod will give for the blinds:

New curtain rod for the kitchen valance?

The shades we ordered about a week and a half ago for the master bedroom and bathroom came last week. I was really impressed considering that the website said to expect a 2-3 week wait, but they shipped within 2 days! We started installing them last week and finished up this morning. I’m really excited to have them up – the bedroom has been noticeably colder since we took the old shades down for painting.

For the master bedroom, we ordered the standard room darkening Levelor cellular shades in a color called “Sand”. The color isn’t quite as good of a match to the wall color as I thought it would be, but it’s a pretty close match to the comforter so it still looks like we knew what we were doing when we ordered them. :) Here are some pictures:

In the master bathroom, we chose a light filtering cellular shade in the same “Sand” color. Even though they’re the same color, they don’t really look like a match. The room darkening ones are so much more opaque, so the color looks really solid. On the light filtering one, it’s a lot more variegated. It’s fine for our application since they’re in two different rooms, but they’re definitely not a close enough match to put them in a space where you’ll see both and expect them to look the same. Here’s a photo of the new bathroom blind:

We opted for an inside mount to avoid covering up the trim, but I think if we had it to do again, we might have gone with an outside mount instead. Since our windows aren’t perfectly square, mounting the shades on the inside really brings out any imperfections. We still have one that we need to spend some time adjusting because it hangs a little crooked. We also had one window that was added after the house was built (when the sleeping porch was enclosed in the 50’s) and it’s trimmed out a little differently than the others in the room. We didn’t really pay attention to it when we were measuring for the shades, but when we went to hang the shade for that window this morning, we realized that there was no clear place to put the mounting brackets on the inside of the window without damaging the trim. So, we just mounted it on the outside instead. It looks fine except that it’s a little narrower than we would have ordered had we been intending to do an outside mount. Eventually, we’ll probably put up some drapery panels, and by the time those go up, I’m sure it won’t be noticeable. If we had it to do again, though, planning on an outside mount would have been a much easier approach!

We placed our order for some new shades for the master bedroom last week. The ones that had been there were lace covered pleated shades that looked ok, but they were pretty dirty and a couple of them had broken strings, so we decided not to put them back up after the painter was done. He did a really good job filling the holes where they had been, so we didn’t have to worry about covering any damage to the trim with the new window treatments, which is really nice.

We decided to go with cellular shades for their insulating value and also because they stack so compactly at the top of the window when they’re raised. We looked at the Bali blinds, but wound up ordering Levolor shades instead because we wanted light blocking ones and the colors available in the Levolor Evening Stars collection seemed a lot truer than the Bali equivalents which had more of a gray metallic hue. We ordered them in the color below (called Sand), which is a similar shade to the new paint color.

The first quote we got was from a local store that was running what seemed like some pretty good sales. I looked online just for good measure and found that I could save over $100 on the entire order, so I ordered online just a few days ago and already got the notification that the blinds have shipped, even though the estimate was 2 to 3 weeks! I’m really excited for them to arrive – hopefully the room will be less drafty once they’re installed.