It's CURTAINS for YOU, Shower!

We've been living with our temporary shower curtain for over two years.  It's not a bad shower curtain. In fact, it cost more money than I usually would consider spending on a plastic shower curtain, but it just isn't the right one of this house and this bathroom.  And it kept two bathrooms dry over the course of about 7 years; mission accomplished, Mr. or Ms. Curtain.

You can see it in the reflection in the mirror here. You can also see the vinyl wallpaper that is just not "us."

I want to try to display and use some of my heirloom and vintage linen towels and the like, so I decided that I'd make a linen shower curtain.  I've made a few shower curtains before, but was a little nervous about the linen, because linen can be kind of costly... unless you use your 60% off one item Jo-Ann coupon. POW!  I chose a not-bright white, but not quite cream or natural.  The material was 50" wide, so I had to put a seam in; I debated over a) 2 seams with a wide center, b) one seam down the center, or c) one 50" wide piece and then one 20" wide piece. I went with that last one and am please with that choice.  And I made my first French seam!  That I then sewed down, because the flappy bit unsettled me. Meh.

Button-holes for hangers because I thought the look would be better with the vintage linens vibe and when I was ready to finish this project, I did not want to go out to buy more nickel grommets.  I wanted to do keyhole buttonholes, but I couldn't make it work on my trial pieces, so I just went with the regular ol' buttonholes.

Cute li'l half-inch button holes!  I did many test buttonholes before attempting them on the actual, nearly-finished ,shower curtain; I'm not sure when I got so skittish about making buttonholes.

I want the other colors in the bathroom to be aquas and purples, so I added this cotton print border to the bottom hem.  Because of the obvious stripe-y pattern, it was fiddly to get neatly cut and sewn, but I'm glad I took the time to fiddle with it. 

Like all the photos, the colors are slightly off due to the NW facing window, short day length, halogen lights, and my lack of skill with cameras.  It's pretty close, though, and I can't be good at everything, right?

I hope that I'll be able to do the major projects in redecorating this bathroom in January or February next year.  I'll strip the wallpaper and repair the walls, skim over the popcorn ceiling, apply finishes to the walls and ceilings, refinish the cabinets, reset some of the hardware, etc.  You'll see it here* if I do.

I wish I knew how to do the linen justice in my photos. Linen is just so pretty and nice and you can't tell much about that here.

BONUS INSIGHTS INTO SHOWER SITUATIONS!* I cannot believe that I hadn't thought of this before or even seen it somewhere. I've been procrastinating cleaning the shower curtain liner because it's such a hassle. I've had bad luck with the washing machine and other methods. Then today I suddenly realized that because it's hung on a tension rod, I can just move the rod to the wall side of the shower and hang it there. Then I'll have the shower wall to support my scrubbing! Duh. The whole thing took a dozen minutes, worked like a goddamn charm, and now I won't have to feel guilty about considering just tossing it for a new one. I saved $5.99, too. 

What you can't see is how the vinyl wallpaper is mostly attached only to itself at the seams, and to the ceiling and tub shower insert seams.  As far as being attached to the wall (or backing paper), well it's only doing that in a few places.  At least the top layer should be pretty easy to remove. The backing paper is anyone's guess.

We have struggled with our shower drain. This is not normally something I'd really talk about on the interwebz even though most of us have had to deal with shower drain issues.  I have really thick, quite coarse, long-ish hair.  The man in the house isn't the kind to shave his legs and such, so he sheds those and then we have two dogs who manage to get their shed hairs on and in everything.  Add lint and hard water minerals to that and well, it required constant attention to keep it from clogging and then it clogged eventually, anyway.  We've tried a few hardware drain sieve thingies and they just didn't give very good results.  Then I spotted this in the cleaning aisle at our local grocery. Two for $3.99, so I there goes some of that shower curtain liner savings, but I'm still up $2!

So far, it's much better. Both easier and less disgusting to clear out, easy to install and uninstall, top rack dishwasher safe when needed.  

*You lucky schmoes!