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.

Progress, people...progress

If I were to tell you that all I want to do for the next few days is walk around barefoot upstairs would you find me odd? I don't even care.  We got our carpet and it is awesome!  And soft, and cushy, and I wanna roll around all over it.  Which is actually what the dog has been doing ever since it got put in. That and running circles because he finally has some grip.  It's a pleasant change for him from the wood floors.  I have never been so excited to vacuum in my life!

But rewind a week before the carpet got put in and my parents came for the weekend for a marathon painting event.  I am starting to worry none of our parents will want to come visit us anymore because every time they do we put them to work and everyone leaves with sore bodies and achy muscles.

The goals for the weekend were to finish the entire upstairs, walls and ceilings in all 3 bedrooms and hallway including the stairwell that required some fancy ladder work.

The ceilings all got fresh coats of white ceiling paint to freshen everything up.  The ceilings didn't look TOO bad before, but as soon as we got a little white up there...well, see for yourself.  Yuck.  The walls all got the same grey paint as the downstairs for now.  I've got some working ideas for some accent walls and wall treatments in different rooms.

Mom insisted on painting the closets since "you don't have to be as careful".  We decided we wanted the closets white, but somehow we didn't have any plain white paint.  So I ran to the hardware store to buy a cheap can.  Apparently Lisbon has the highest class hardware store in a tri-state area because the paint that is in our closets is the MOST EXPENSIVE paint in our house and we bought really good paint for our house.  I expected the paint to be made of diamonds, or Edward Cullen's ashes but NOPE, not a shimmer to be found.

 Dad and I are both pretty competitive.  I believe I got it from him because when I was little he would NEVER let me win at Candyland...the whole "A good lower is still a loser" was ingrained early.  And don't think for one second that painting was any different. There was some serious smack-talk ensued.

The reason the hallway and staircase look half finished is because the bottom half of the walls are getting board and batten, something along these lines.

We had planned on this anyway but it was solidified by the line in the middle of wall from some wallpaper which had previously been painted over with textured paint. 

We finished most of the painting upstairs besides the woodwork.

The weekend ended and we had originally been told that our carpet would be installed the Monday right after.  Monday came and went, no carpet.  Tuesday, came and went, no carpet.  Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday all the same.  This whole time we had been sleeping on an air mattress in our living room because our mattress was shoved in the bathroom waiting for carpet installation to occur. 


Monday the 24th came and...CARPET!  When I went home for lunch the carpet guy was gone so I snuck upstairs to see the status.  I was a bit taken aback, I'm not quite sure what I was expecting but this is what it looked like...

And this is what it looked like after work!

And finally after 3 looooong months, we finally have a bedroom that includes a bed that is off the floor!  THIS IS BIG, PEOPLE!

Teddy has been without a room for 3 months as well and has been spending most of his time right where you see him.

So that's where we're at...for now.  We went a full 15 hours after the carpet was done before starting another project...more on that later this week.  But now if you'll excuse me, Teddy and I have some rolling around to do on the new carpet...