It's Curtains For You, Guest Room!

Once I had wrapped up all the major projects for our bedroom, I decided to continue my warping up of the guest bedroom.  You might remember my ridiculous lampshade redo... well, the window shade fabric is equally ridiculous and I love it so.

See?  The crazy colors make sense now.  Or at least have friends in the neighborhood.  Ahem.

I bought it at Ikea before we moved with guest room window coverings in mind, but I didn't have measurements or even photos of the guest room windows so I guessed* at how much I would need and came up a bit short.  I found the green woven cotton at JoAnn.

This door leads out to the second story balcony and faces SE, so it gets sun first thing in the morning and all day. Pardon the blurry shot, please.

I had wanted to do something kind of strappy and unusual to lift the shade, as well as minimize the amount of hardware I'd need to attach to the wall, moulding or trim.  I had a type of purse hardware in mind, but couldn't find it at JoAnn where I had a handful of paper and electronic coupons so I decided to go for overalls strap hardware.  I think it worked out better for how the shades look from the outside with this method, so win-win.

This method is quick and easy to open and close, although I suppose it might depend on the height of one doing it.  I could add more buttons later if I wanted to have more than one open position.

OOPS: After I thought I was done, I discovered that even though there is a rather stiff blackout lining and the Ikea print is also heavy bodied, the shades won't hold themselves straight when open.  So I added a wooden dowel that we already had between the layers of fabric of the shade on the door.  The window shade was too wide and heavy for a four-foot wooden dowel or a pieced together version, so I bought a six-foot metal rod for that one.  It's raw steel, so I sprayed it with a clear lacquer to prevent rust (they tell me that things do rust here) and cut it to size.

[Sad trombones]

This is not the look I was going for, but the dowel and rod saved the day (see below).  Neither is the purple paint on the wall in there.  If you saw my last post, you know that we love us some purple bedroom walls, but not quite this grape-candy-color, at least not in this room at this time.  I have picked out colors for the walls and ceiling and will share that when it's done.

For reasons we will never understand, this window is not centered on the wall, so it is also not centered over the bed.  It is partly over the bed and faces NE, so even though some light sneaks in around the edges when the shade is closed, it's MUCH darker in there and the light doesn't stream directly on to the pillows.

*You don't know how badly I wanted to use "guest" there just for funsies.