When we were first married I went through some serious decorating problems. But then again, who doesn’t? You’re caught in limbo, trying to weld her style and his style together, combined with your mama’s style, because that’s what you grew up with. Throw in a bunch of hand-me-down furniture and it’s a disaster.
Problem A: I wanted everything black (furniture, bedspread…), and didn’t think black and brown coordinated at all. Though not possible at the time, I wanted all of our furniture to match. And when it didn’t, I just painted it black.
Luckily I now see the error of my ways. I’m not a fantastic decorator, but I do try to reflect our family’s personality throughout our house. Now I’ve realized mixing and matching furniture is fine. We’ve got pieces from Target, Ikea, furniture warehouses, and a few vintage ones thrown in there as well. And somehow it just works.
Enter Problem B: I went through a red phase, where everything was red, black, and white (just like our wedding colors were). Then I quickly got sick of red and turned to my “go-to” color, lime. Guys, I had a lime green bedroom door in middle school. This is MY color.
But consequently, everything (and I mean everything – pillows, blankets, lampshades, artwork, curtains) was the same shade of lime. Black and lime. Then when we got brown leather couches, it turned to black, brown and lime.
A year ago I finally tried to salvage the problem by adding royal blue, along with and pops of mustard yellow. It really didn’t look so bad at all. But in this house, with everything going on, I knew we needed color to liven things up. It works so well, and makes me smile. (When we get our orange and white chevron rug shipped soon, I’ll take you on a house tour.)
But alas, the point is that I tend to gravitate towards lime green. (Remember our dining chairs? The rocking chair I reupholstered? Our couch pillows? It’s a problem.) So for three and a half years, we’ve had these not-quite-limey-lime green curtains gracing our living room. They’re hideous and I can’t stand to look at the color anymore. I thought about dyeing them for a while, but I can’t since they’re 100% polyester. Right now they’ve found their home in Jack’s room, where they fit in perfectly.
So that left our bedroom curtains being hung in the living room. I love the way they look (they are a sheer white, with hand-drawn, geometric diamonds on them ), but now our bedroom didn’t have curtains and was feeling stark. Enter Target. After disappointingly browsing the curtain isle for a good ten or fifteen minutes, I met up with Tyler in the bath isle. They have a much larger selection of patterns in their shower curtains, so the thought came to me: I can just turn a shower curtain into a window curtain by cutting it in half! We already have blinds, so the curtains will just be for framing the window anyway. Genius idea, right? (And much cheaper than curtain panels, by the way, and really really easy.)
DIY Shower Curtain to Window Curtain
Step one: Lay out your shower curtain. (If you’re my mom, you’d have washed and ironed it, but if you’re like me you’re too lazy to do so.)
Step two: Cut it in half. This was really easy and didn’t even require folding because the wrinkle lines were still there from being packaged. One point for the above mentioned laziness!
Step three: Hem the raw edge. If you’re my mom, you will probably iron the edge over and pin it. If you’re like me, just eyeball it.
Step four: Don’t forget to back stitch at the beginning and when you get to the end.
Step five: Hang them up and you’re done! I just threaded mine through the loops at the top (had to cut them a teeny bit wider) but you could also use rings to hang them. We love the pattern and warmth it adds to the room for a lot less than buying individual panels.