curtains – Garden Rat

My home has a lot of windows. This is amazing, because the 630 sq ft apartment we had before this had two total and there was no light. I love that I have so many windows now.

However, my home came stock standard with white blinds. I am not a fan of blinds. I hate raising them, lowering them, and twisting the little rod to get them to angle the blinds in the right direction. They are not really energy efficient, and hot summer and cold winter weather came right through them. Plus, I never ever feel like they are completely closed. I know they are, but I always feel like you can see into them.

*The window blinds that came with my house. The fuzzy platform is a cat shelf I have installed so my little monster can scream at other cats, squirrels, and god knows what at 3am.*

I like blackout/insulated curtains, and I found this great blackout fabric on Amazon. (not an affiliate link) The fabric is insulated, so it helps keep heat in during the winter and out during the summer. It’s white, so from outside you see white curtains with the blue house, and that looks cute.

For the inside layer of curtain fabric, I bought sheets for everything but the bathroom. I got jellyfish fabric for the bathroom to keep with my undersea theme. I needed ten windows worth of fabric, and that’s a lot. Joanne’s seems to be dying a long tragic death, and has little in the way of selection, and Fabric.com got bought out and closed by Amazon. Because of all this, it was just easier and cheaper to buy flat sheets from Walmart for fabric.

It was a really easy job to sew them up. I just made a big pocket and doubled over the top for the rod to slip through.

I added some inexpensive curtain rods to the my windows. Maybe when I do the rooms in their final colorful fun form I’ll replace those rods with fancy ones. I don’t know yet.

*Curtain rods were easy to install and were not crooked. The camera angel just makes it look that way.*

I also don’t want my neighbors seeing into my home, so I got double rods for all of my larger windows. This allows me to put sheers into the inner rod, so we can see out, but nobody can see in.

*They have an Arlo camera right at our bedroom window there, so I like having a privacy option. I don’t know how much they can see, but I’d rather be safe than sorry!*

I started this project last year in December, and I have 7 out of 10 curtains done. The last windows in the dining/kitchen area need done still, but are challenging because I need to figure out how to hang them when the windows but up against the cabinets with zero space to spare.

What I didn’t expect was how effective on heat and cold insulation these curtains would be. You can physically feel the different behind the curtain when it’s hot or cold out. The difference is shocking. If I had know these kind of insulating fabric for curtains existed, I would have done this years ago. Not to mention the black out effect is better than any store bought black out curtains I have ever had. I can sleep midday and it’s dark in my room now.

This makes this project far more effective than I could have imagined. First, I feel safer in my home with windows that feel fulling closed. You can’t put a price on that. Second, the insulation quality of the curtains with that black out fabric was off the charts. I totally underestimated how much of a difference this would make. I highly recommend this, if you can sew even a tiny bit. This is an easy project to help insulate your home and depending on how old your windows are? This could really help.

I am in my 50s, and I have a degenerative joint condition. As a consequence I work 4 days a week at a sit down office job, not five, because sitting in an office chair is painful. This is in stark contrast to my younger years, when I would not only work 5 days a week as a floor nurse, but also do 12-16 hour project days on the weekends. This means that small projects can wreck me for a few days.

With this in mind, yesterday was a nice day, so I pulled out my saw horses and tools, and built a cabinet box for next to the dishwasher.

I haven’t put the trim molding back because we are contemplating putting some sort of panel on the wall there. Something more water resistant due to the dishwasher. We are waffling between a traditional bead board look, or just abandoning all sense and doing art under acrylic sheeting.

This was just a gaping hole under the unsupported butcher block counter tops that the shit contractor left. He was paid to make a slide out cabinet but didn’t do the work. This is an ugly cabinet box made of 3/4″ plywood. I plan to paint all the cabinets and I will edge band and paint it when I do the rest. I was mostly concerned about the unsupported heavy butcher block drooping onto my $600+ dishwasher. Now I feel my dishwasher investment is protected, and we will be fine.

While I did this, I also cut up two closet sliding doors that we had to get rid of, so I can slowly feed them into the garbage can.

It also was good practice for using a circular saw guide that you clamp onto the wood. I’d never used any kind of guide before and this is my first circular saw.

This is a Bora WTX clamp. I really like how it works, but the reviews are right. The sled was just a pain in the butt for my Dewalt saw, so it’s got no use for me. I got straight cuts without the sled just fine.

I don’t have the most experience with circular saws, because when I was a kid I looked like a girl and my father refused to let me use any tool you had to plug in. I’m mostly self taught with the help of online videos. The guide came with a saw sled, which pretty much all the reviews said was garbage, and they were right. I tossed the cheap plastic thing, and just did my thing without it.

Turns out circular saws are not as scary as I had originally thought. I feel pretty comfortable now. It’s definitely weird going from being treated like a girl, and disallowed all access to the tools to make my life easier, to now not only being given access, to being supported and having other men in stores get excited to walk me through it. If transitioning from female to male ever taught me anything, it’s that sexism around home improvement and gender rolls are pretty damn real.

Speaking of ignoring gender rolls, I also finished sewing the curtain for my work room.

The house came with these thick white blinds. They aren’t terrible, but the cat and I hate the blinds. We lost about 6-7 inches of window at the top of these like you see in my half thought out before picture below.

*That cat tree is going to be replaced with a built in wall unit for our fat princess. It will take less space and be in less dire threat of being toppled by her antics.*

Below here is an unfairly better taken after picture in which I opened both curtains, and also washed the windows because I noticed how filthy it was.

Ignore the potting bench that I am using for delivery drivers to hide packages behind, when they can be bothered. I am buying a bench to put there instead. Also, ignore the portable air conditioner. Getting mini splits for air conditioning is a few years off.

We will probably always keep the sheers closed because there is a lot of . . . activity across the street and we don’t necessarily need to live in a fishbowl.

I mean, The windows look so much bigger with that 6-7″ of space back. Also, look at that nice new window sill! I did that a few weeks ago, mostly because our cat is fat and can’t get up on there without it.

These projects are all a part of Phase 1 of the house plan. When I get all these little things done, I will deep dive into each room. That means better curtain rods, painted walls and cabinets, and finishing touches. Right now? I am just trying to get things functional and ready for a full launch into next year.

After all this, which I don’t think is much, I spent the rest of the day laying in bed sore as hell. I will probably not do much today either. I have to accept I am not 25 anymore, and pushing my body this hard has consequences. I’d be very kind to anyone else fighting with this, but I always feel like I could have done more.

After I finish writing this, I will probably make some breakfast for the wife and I, and go lay in bed again. Not a bad days plan, overall.

Tag: curtains

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