Window Treats

Living Room Flower and Flounce

It's a beautiful thing to live on the top floor of an apartment with a black tar roof and loads of full-sun windows...in the winter. In the summer it swelters and I've been on the lookout for some inexpensive but classy looking window treatment options. Luckily this weekend I hit the jackpot.

Powder Room Detail

Friday night I had a few guests over for dinner and I wanted to jazz up my blue dated bathroom before they descended. I can't do much about the faux wallpaper linoleum walls (don't ask, I'd never seen it before either) but there is a beautiful deep-silled window with elegant day-time light. I like to keep some sort of shade up in addition to the frosted glass for a bit more privacy.  I dug through my fabric stash and found the turquoise yard remnant and threw it over the tension rod. Pretty, but not enough substance. Then I remembered the beautiful tea towel from KimKitch and tossed it over the rod to layer and I kept adding and subtracting ric rack and star headed pins and freshly potted plants and a vintage cigar box until I had this:

Powder Room Privacy

The best part: I already had all of the elements so it cost me nothing.

(PS the "shade pull" is actual a single vintage clip on earring! It's a giant pink pearl and it matches the dress of the cigar box lady perfectly, yessss! I knew there was a reason I was hanging on to it!)

Saturday I was on the prowl, determined to put up the rest of the curtain rods that have been gathering dust and meant business about taking care of the sun problem in the sun-room/studio.

At TJMaxx I was scouring the isles for sheets, tablecloths, shower curtains--anything I could use to help cut the full-strength afternoon sun in the back room. I had a few dining room tablecloths in my arms but they just weren't quite it. On a last go-through I discovered a hidden stash of light-blocking curtain panels, and just my luck they were white and there were four of them and they were one quarter the original cost! The studio now looks like this in the afternoon sun:

Studio p.m. Sun: Full Strength

Hooray! I ironed the 84" long panels and threw them over the long curtain rod that spans the three windows that was left behind. The great thing about the panels is that because they are not attached through the loops I can pull on one end and either raise or lower them. Hooray! I can still bird-watch in the morning and be cooler in the afternoon.

With the studio taken care of I had three white fabric shower curtains left over from last year's attempt at blocking the afternoon studio sun. Even though the living room and bedroom windows have light-blocking roller shades, it was a bit stark...until I got smart and doubled the shower curtains, poking holes in the bottom hems and pushing the silver hooks through both the top and bottom slivers to give me a nice, puffed flounce:

Living Room Window Re-Treatments

With one white curtain left I made a bee-line for the bedroom. Even with the light-blocking shades the sun is so strong in the summer the temperature inside runs about 10 degrees hotter than whatever is happening outside. I pulled out the trusty power drill, put up the rod, put up the curtain and pulled the shade and came up with this:

Afternoon Dream

Just looking at it makes me want to curl up with a good book on a Sunday afternoon and slip into an easy sleep.

Wondering about the stained glass curtain from a few months ago? It's been refashioned into a kitchen valance:

Stained Glass Redux

And there you go. Everything was under $100 total.

I'm off to bake so I'll have something sweet to eat while I watch Upstairs Downstairs on WGBH.

XO Terez