It's Curtains For Me... and I'm Quite Pleased About It

This is a story about one living room window.  Last year, when we totally re-did the living room, (fixing the drywall and re-painting, securing the floor, installing the hardwood) we re-installed two out of three window curtain sets. Two brackets per window, two rods per window, two curtains per window.

*And don't make that rookie mistake of installing your curtains right tight to the window frame. That is incorrect. Install at least 4" away from the window frame in each direction. That means 4" above and 4" aside from your frame. This will make your windows look so much bigger and more professional.

However, our third window just would not have it. One bracket installed on the left just perfectly, as normal. But the one on the right found nothing to hold on to. No stud - all mud. A drywall screw couldn't hold it. The molly bolts we had in stock couldn't hold it.

And so, that poor little window sat there sans curtains, sans rods, and sans uno bracket for near to a year. NEAR TO A YEAR! But just this past Saturday, Mike brought home a molly bolt that worked! (For the outrageous price of just a few short cents mind you...) And we were finally able to put up the last set of rods and curtains.

What a difference and what a relief to have something so stoopid finally taken care of. And now those pictures in the center of those two windows look un-centered. I decided at the time not to worry about it. Maybe I'll re-center them next year....

And speaking of stuff that's been hanging over our heads for a year or so... Dodge #2 is GONE! The guy and his posse came back on Sunday as promised, tow truck in tow, and carted it away. We can breath another sigh of relief. That, plus another load of yard fodder gone to the dump... kinda makes me think there's hope in the world after all.

But that's it.

I had wild dreams of starting some new and exciting project this Sunday... or at least making progress on an oldy-moldy project this Sunday. No such luck. I'm having renovation withdrawal and I don't like it.

Just Another Hole in the Wall

Thursday night and Mike and I just couldn't figure out just what to do first. We musta stood in the kitchen for near to 10 minutes just shooting out idears -

Do you want me to put up the window casings in the mudroom?
Yes and the trim in the hallway needs to be nailed - I just stuck it there. And oh there's the banister trim...
But that needs another piece to make it work, although I could cut it to fit as it is...
No, just forget that then -
And I can take the trim off the mudroom closet and plane it... do you want the doors up because it looks so much better with just that...and hey, what do you want to do about this kitchen wall?
I want to paint that on Saturday if I can.
Ok, so I need to mud that up and put a patch in here... but I don't know what we have downstairs for compound....

And it went on until finally I was like, "OMG just get started on SOMETHING!"

So Mike brought in the air hose - from the air compressor in the garage thru the living room window - and first nailed on the hallway trim that I had put into place a couple days ago. Then he brought up the mudroom window casings and sills and nailed those on.


And then came the matter of the kitchen wall. Yes, there's one odd section of wall in the kitchen that's white - ie, never been painted. And take down that lovely picture of Mike and I on our wedding day, and you'll see it hides a big banged up mark. Below that, near the floor, a giant foot-sized hole caused by... well... a foot. Next to that, purple stains where I dropped and broke an entire glass of red wine.

Yup, this poor section of wall has taken a beating and we've finally decided to do something about it, at least temporarily.

The kitchen as a whole took a real beating when the house was lifted to put in the basement. (Didn't know we did that? Check it out here.) The walls are cracked all over the place and eventually, all the cabinets will need to be removed to fix it. Not a small undertaking and not something we're ready to tackle just yet.

So in the mean time, to help the kitchen feel better about itself, we decided to fix that wall. And if I was going to paint on Saturday, Mike needed to mud Thursday night to allow for drying/sanding time. Since this is a temp fix, Mike just slapped on what we had in stock - which happened to be ancient pea-coat - screwed on a patch for the foot hole - and tonight, he'll just sand it quick and call it done.

Mikey was so cute, he was very interested when Mike was patching and wanted to help.



And Friday night, Mike decided to sand and put on another coat of pea coat... thus delaying my painting on Saturday, but he really wanted to do a good job for the wall, despite the temporaryness of it all. And as you can see, it looks really good in photo. (Although up close you can tell - it needs some more sanding.)

Friday night we also tackled the difficult business of living room curtains... Yes, curtains can be difficult - especially when trying to put them up in exactly the same location as before... with the old anchors still buried in the wall.... but not utilizing the old anchors, now plastered, sanded, and painted.

The solution - molly bolts. And they worked for two and a half of the three windows. But on that last window, Mike hit a pocket of nothing and the molly bolts had nothing to brace against. We still haven't figured out a solution to that.

So no doubt you're wondering about today's plan. After all, it is Sunday. Day of doing.

Believe it or not, I haven't even thought about it yet. I'll have to get a list going.

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No Budget Transformation!

Remember the other post when I said I was going to steal some furniture and a rug from my guest room for the mudroom - temporarily of course, for the party?

Well - if it sounded a little bizarre to you, it did to me too and I had no clue what the consequences would be. But despite my misgivings, I did just that Saturday. Mike gave me a hand in the AM and we brought in the white rug and my little teal couch and a coffee table. The rug was a bit too long, but I hid one side with the couch and had to admit, it looked pretty good and comfy!

Then I put up the curtain rods - and let me tell you, the make-your-own-double-rod idea came out fabulously and easily!

Since the windows aren't trimmed out yet, and I know window treatments should be at least 4" up and 4" over from the window trim, I measured out 6" (2" trim) and installed the brackets.

To create the second rod, I just installed the smaller second rod brackets butt up to the first ones. This way, when I finally get curtains, they'll hide the brackets.


If you remember, I had already bought my sheers at the Linens 'n Things closing sale, and boy was I psyched about getting those up. And the minute I got down off my chair and stood back and looked at the room, I just couldn't believe it. The transformation was incredible - it looked awesomely comfy and the sheers were perfect and the rods were straight.


You don't want to know what my guest room looks like, but since we lock the cats up in there during the party - no one will have to look at it anyway.