Curtains!

We were supposed to break up for the Christmas holidays on Monday, but as I was clawing back time from the week before, I actually finished on Tuesday night… or Wednesday morning, as it was 3am when I turned in.

The holiday so far has been all about curtains. While I carried on working on Tuesday, the poet nipped out to get curtain track for 2 bay windows and furniture paint.

I don’t understand why anyone would want to put a straight curtain pole across a beautiful bay window. Apart from it detracting from the beauty of the structure, it cuts off a lot of the room and unless they’re floor-length curtains, it’s very, very draughty – and the central heating plus the fire were both working overtime.

When he got back, he fitted one of the new tracks and re-hung the curtains. I didn’t think they’d fit, but they do and they look great.  The other curtain track snapped as he tried to bend it around the bay, so he didn’t start the next one until a day or so later.

One of my most-hated chores is ruching curtains. If I can get away with not doing it, then I don’t do it. The poles, by the way, will be coming down. We were going to leave them up, but they don’t look very nice, so they’re coming down.

I had a bit of a lie-in on Wednesday, but not as long as I could have done with. We had to go and do some window shopping and we dropped the dog off at the MiL’s first. We were looking at things like tumble dryers and dehumidifiers, but we also wanted a pair of curtains for our bedroom.

Although we love the curtains that were there, they have eyelets in – as do most curtains now, it seems. I could go off on a right rant here, but it’s Christmas so I won’t. All I will say is: NOT EVERYONE HAS CURTAIN POLES. And especially around bay windows.

The poet chose purple this time. He usually leaves things like that to me, but as he expressed a preference, we went with purple, and they are a nice colour too. We don’t have any purple bedding, but we do have pinky-coloured bedding. I didn’t want to go all out buying new matching bedding though, so I suggested a bedspread instead, which will go over the top of all of the bedding.

We also bought thermal linings for the curtains, which were blackout curtains in any case. And we replaced the curtain track that snapped.

It was too late on Wednesday when we got back to do anything, and it was dark in any case. So we didn’t do any more work around the house until Thursday, when the poet tried again with the bedroom curtain track. It took a few goes, but he got there.

You can see in this picture to the right that there was once a curtain track fastened to the ceiling over the bay but it’s been filled and painted. I’d wonder why they didn’t leave it and why they replaced it with the pole, but the track was too close to the window and would need sill-length curtains, and ours are below-sill.

The thermal linings were too long, so he didn’t use them. I was going to alter them, but I’m not sure we need to…

Now, without a word of a lie, the outside temperature has hardly changed from one day to the next this week, but just hanging these 2 pairs of curtains closer to the windows instead of having them along the pole has warmed the house up so much I had to re-program the central heating thermostat. It must be 2 or 3 degrees (Celsius) warmer, and that means 2 – 3ºC lower on the central heating.

Also, both rooms feel like they’ve doubled in size. They haven’t, of course, but we estimate we’ve gained close to 12 square feet per room. We had the new bedspread too, but last night it was far too hot in the bedroom and we both slept badly. Hence me changing the program.

While he was fitting the curtain track yesterday, and hanging the curtains, I was altering the curtains in the dining room, in-situ, by hand. This pair of curtains is one of a set that my dad and the poet’s mum bought for us one Christmas. They’ve already done a tour of duty in 3 houses, now this pair is on its 4th.

I’d already hemmed them up once to fit in the last house, but they needed hemming again to fit in this house. I’ve only done a temporary tacking job in case they need to be let down again in the future. This means the hem is now a bit stiff, but they fit perfectly and are a dream to open and close when before they were a nightmare. My fingertips, however, feel as though they should be bleeding as the needle felt as though it was blunting with every stitch.

A patio door is precisely where a curtain pole should go, as well as flat windows. But please, stop putting them across bay windows, and curtain manufacturers, please remember that not everyone likes, wants or can use poles and we still need proper curtain tape at the top.

We still have curtains to finish in the kitchen, which have been started, and we’d like to finish them before our guests come on Christmas Day, or even before Christmas Day as we’re expecting friends as well as family to pop in. There’s more hand-stitching to do with those, as well as machine-stitching, so I’ll give it a day or two for my fingertips to recover from the big, heavy curtains in the dining toom.

How do you plan to spend your holidays?