Design Curiosities

Steven and I have never bothered with window treatments before. They tend to be pricey, and since we are renters we didn’t want to do any unnecessary spending. Our apartment in Houston looked great without curtains, and there were blinds for privacy. Our current apartment, however? We have blinds in the two bedrooms, but the living room and kitchen are a different story.

Our kitchen window is wide open to the courtyard, and I’ve noticed that about half of the residents have some kind of curtains. Our upstairs neighbors across the courtyard do not. It is not so bad though. Every now and then when we are in our respective kitchens at the same time, we just ignore each other.

I am not sure if the same can be said about the people in the building that our balcony backs up to. I don’t think we have any peeping toms, but there was an awkward moment with some workers who were in one of the units. That’s when I put up the black out shades from our old apartment up. It was just a little too coincidental for my comfort.

That is also when I called Steven and told him we were putting up curtains.

Not only will they give us some privacy, but I think it will make our apartment a little more homey. We are thinking about doing roman shades for the kitchen and bedroom, and standard curtains for the living room. Roman shades aren’t any cheaper than standard curtains, so we have decided to make them ourselves. There is a great tutorial on Martha Stewart’s website, here, that we are going to try out. During my search I also found a no sew tutorial using cheap blinds, but I think we are going to stick to the other version since we will have a sewing machine (and lots of help).

Photo credits:

Links Printed Roman Shade from West Elm
Custom Made Roman Shade from Ambiance
Vanessa Floral Roman Shade from Pottery Barn
Classic Shade DIY from Martha Stewart
Casual Sheer DIY from Martha Stewart
Custom Made Roman Shades from A Cup of Jo