The people who owned this house before we bought it loved their drapes and blinds. I have no idea what they looked like because our predecessors absconded with them long before we first peeked through the windows. But I can tell you the blinds were not the everyday el cheapo Wal*Mart flimsies. How do I know this? Because one of the valances was overlooked and left in the garage. It was off the overhead bar of a genuine 2 1/2 inch Levelor real wood blind. Thank goodness! There are no Wal*Mart cooties in this place that were not brought here by anyone other than us! All the Wal*Mart cooties that reside in this house are our own personal pets.
We were spared the necessity of removing and tossing about 2800 dollars worth of blinds and an untold fortune in draperies that probably did not match our early farmhouse junk decor anyway, but our benefactors did leave the holes in the walls caused by the various devices that kept them in place. Filling and texturing those holes honed my already substantial skills to the highest level imaginable. In other words, I gooped in a bunch of spackle, painted over the mess and started looking for more "window treatments" to cover the paint that covered the mess I made filling the holes. Kinda like putting gloves on over mittens. I just might get away with it.
After the paint had dried, our first window treatments were an assortment of spare sheets, blankets and bedspreads that were hung with the greatest of care and with eyes that were blind to the different hues. It worked. I have continued my efforts to remedy the disaster and today can report the End Of The Job. The last blind, a folding vertical fabric one that fits the slider which leads to the patio, came in today and I finished hanging it after dinner! We now have our privacy just by twirling sticks or releasing strings. No more getting up on tip toe to re-hang the sheet that came off the nail. I have a feeling, though, the hard part is yet to come. Blinds are easy. They're either in a box in the store or they're hanging in the window casing. Same with cooking, washing, vacuuming, shopping and other mundane household chores. Either they're done or they need to be done. Drapes are different.
I'm in way over my head whenever fabrics enter the equation. I know some kind of rod is needed from which the drapes are, well, draped. Some other gizzmo is needed to gather them to one side, maybe you need something to pull them back and forth? I'm not sure. And, all of it should match something. The floor? The ceiling? The furniture? Again, I'm not sure.
It'll all get worked out somehow. I always depended on Carolyn to know this kinda stuff.
I'm really, really starting to miss her. And we have so much farther to go.
Oh yes. Becky never wanted to mess with draperies, so left the "window treatments" in our house entirely in my hands when we remodeled. You may have noticed that there is not a single drapery to be found in our home. Every single window has a vertical blind. It's a guy thing. an A+ for functionality, but no sense of style or decor what-so-ever.
ReplyDeleteI may wind up enlisting Carolyns sister. Her tastes are to Carolyns liking and she works for free.
ReplyDelete