How to Make Cheap and Pretty Curtain Rods

Our new house has a lot of windows on our main floor, which is awesome for natural light and making the space seem bigger.  But what is not awesome is when you have to walk from the upstairs bedroom down to the basement to shower in the morning and in your sleepy stupor forget to put some pants on. 

So for the sake of our neighbors, we had to get some curtains. I was a bit intimidated at what it was going to cost because of the amount of windows we have.  Not only the amount but 3 of the 6 windows in the main living area are over 7 feet wide.  I ended up finding some curtains that I really liked that were on sale plus I scoured the internet for a coupon and found one that saved me an additional $25. 

The excitement of my curtain score was quickly killed as I realized I now had to buy curtain rods for all these windows.  If you have ever shopped for extra long curtain rods you will know that they are not cheap!  Some of the extra long non-telescoping ones can reach prices of over $100 and we just couldn't afford to buy at least 3 of those for JUST the rod. 

So I started thinking of how I could DIY something to hang my curtains...wire, wood dowels, metal, plastic, pipes. Wait a minute.  Metal, pipes...Electrical conduit!  This stuff was perfect.  It comes in different widths, standard about 10 feet long, I can cut it to the length I need and THE BEST PART....

I had a lot of Rustoleum Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint at home that I could use and I found some great finials at IKEA that were on sale.  Love that store.

The process went something like this:

I removed the pricing stickers and painted the rods with Rustoleum Oil Rubbed Bronze.  I let them dry for a week to be sure they were completely cured.  Ok, I just got caught up in some other things around the house and didn't get back to the rods until a week later. 

The finials that I bought came completely apart so I was able to spray paint them in ORB spray paint (Oil Rubbed Bronze) as well to match. 

I used Gorilla Glue Epoxy to attach the disk of the finial to the rod. 

And then use some tape to keep them in place while they dried.  I gave them a good two hours to completely set even though the package only called for 30 minutes.

I put the curtains on the rod and screwed the glass orb of the finial into the ends and it was done! 

Curtain rods for our windows that didn't break the bank!

(Crown molding will be added to cover that white strip at the top)

Materials
-Electrical conduit ($3.79)
-Rustoleum Oil Rubbed Bronze (It's between $6-$7 but I already had some)
-IKEA Blast finials (I got them for $5.99)
-Gorilla Glue epoxy ($5.99, I needed this for some other projects as well)

My wallet and my neighbors thank me.