Hem and Haw

Our old apartment had 8.5 foot ceilings and big windows. I dressed them in long, flowing, white, floor-length curtains. The walls were dark wood paneling, so these curtains were life savers. I hung them extra wide and kept them extra long to cover as much of my wall as possible.
Even after I painted the walls, I adored them. And I was so happy to bring them to our new home and let em work their curtainy magic on the place. The first place they went was our bedroom, because it was the first room we painted. They looked great. Long, sleek, white...floorlength.

But...wait. What's this? Was there a flood? Is there a reason my curtains are gripping onto the rod for dear life?

This is the work of an enemy. But who would have access to our room? (ahem, everyone, because we haven't put our door up yet). Okay, but who actually goes into our room other than me...except.....Erik!

My husband, he's turned against me.

"Kayla...we have baseboard radiators now. We shouldn't hang curtains over them."

Me: "Give me one good reason why"
Erik: "House fires, heat loss, death"

That was four months ago. I took down my curtains, folded them, and forgot about them. There was no way I would shorten them. I would just...not use curtains at all. I could use them in the summer, right? I could buy shorter curtains for the cold months.

But these were the cold months, and I was doing nothing about our naked windows. As the weather kept getting colder and colder into February (isn't is spring already?), I started looking at "shorter" curtains. And guess what? Any I liked were WAY too expensive for me to consider for "sometimes" curtains, or even for all-the-time curtains. I'd grown so used to buying inexpensive curtain pairs at IKEA that seeing a $39.99 label on a SINGLE CURTAIN made me cringe. And it made Erik furrow his eyebrows like this:

I know, I know, there are sales...and even if I made my own, curtains will always run me at least around $40/pair. I guess maybe price wasn't the biggest factor. It was wasting what I already had; what was waiting for me in the linen closet, patiently. The curtains of way-back-when. The four pairs I'd spent close to $120 on already. If I bought new ones, I'd never hang the old guys back up again. I knew it. They'd die in there. They'd die unless they were amputated. I really don't like war movies, by the way, or surgeries. Or blood. Okay, let's get off of this metaphor before I pass out.....

It was time. I started with my favorites. I call them the shiny zebra curtains. Erik never knows what I'm talking about. But look!

Makes sense, right?


Well, these babies are not for sale anymore. The zebras are extinct! And I love them. So they were the first out of the closet.

I told you I have a lot of white curtains. I should have also told you that I'm bad at folding.

First, I hung them up to determine the length they should be.

Hi. I'm a fire hazard.

I'm not a seamstress. A seamstress would use a lot of pins and make quick work out of this process. But I haven't had my finger pricked since 1994, and I wasn't going to reset the clock today. So, an unecessarily long amount of time later, my curtains looked like this.

 

Eh? It's not that sleek-looking. It looks like when you hold your hair all folded under to see if you want bangs.

Or maybe I'm the only one who does that.

Okay! So I decided I would like the length to be somewhere in between. I measured each with my tape measure and found that one was 65" and the other was 60". Since 63" is a standard length, I started feeling better about the whole process.


Measure, cut, pin (for wayyy too long), hem, and hang. Voila!

I'm going to hem the two pairs I have for the living room, as well as a grommet pair for the room upstairs. I didn't tell you about the room upstairs yet. Maybe next post.....no, maybe after I show you some rooms that aren't terrifying. How's that for suspense?