Donkee House

Before & After – Living Room & Bedroom Curtains

These are the windows in our living room.  For New York windows, they are of decent size and we fortunately get pretty good light during the day.  Aside from the double cell blinds we had custom made from Select Blinds, these windows have been sitting bare for more than a year.  (Never mind the air conditioner, I wish it was not there to obstruct the window, but it’s an ugly necessity for an ugly humid New York City summer).  A couple of weekends ago, the husband and I made the pilgrimmage to the Ikea in Red Hook.  We went mostly for under cabinet lighting for the kitchen, but ended up solving our curtain dilemna instead…

The problem for us was in selecting the right curtain rod or device to hang the curtains from.  I never liked the traditional curtain rods with the finials, I think most of them are boring and a tad too stale.  A lot of them were fine and non-offensive really, but I was never in love with anything I saw.  In Ikea however, we happened upon the curtain wire and clips:

These are virtually invisible once installed (see below) and provide a simple, minimal, flexible and unintrusive solution to our boring curtain rod impasse.

We purchased 2 packs of Matilda curtains (2 panels per pack):

We clipped the loops down instead of cutting them off in case we want to change to a curtain rod instead of a wire in the future and hung all 4 panels:

Yes, we even cleaned up the table for this after shot.  A table we need to replace, by the way.  Another year long story in the making.  We forgot to put the chairs back, though. In any case, we think the curtains are making at least a slight improvement to the room.  Now if only we can find or make the perfect dining table….

Using the same wire and clips, we tackled our master bedroom too.  Here is the before:

Same bare windows with grey toned double cell blinds that go back to the wall color.  For these windows, we purchased 2 packs of Wilma curtains- a very light and translucent cream with an extremely soft hand and 2 packs of Alvine Fata – a lacy diamond or spidery pattern in cream with an almost vintage feel.

Wilma

Alvine Fata

We clipped the loops of Wilma together with the top of Alvine Fata:

Here is the after with all 8 panels hung:

Now we can have both light and privacy at the same time and the space feels a bit cozier and a tad more put together, don’t ya thnk?