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curtain hardware ideas
Thursday, January 10th, 2013 01:16 amForestfen is still in the process of moving her stuff from the old house to the new one. I want to help her get curtains put up, to make the new house look more lived-in.
The living room has 3 large windows. I think it would be best to have a single long curtain rod spanning all 3 windows.
Extra-long curtain rods are hard to find and are expensive. But I found these pages which explain how to make your own curtain rod from electrical conduit!
How to make a cheap, awesome, professional Curtain Rod
Steal this idea: Extra-long Conduit Curtain Rod
I could get 3 pieces of conduit, each about 7 feet long, and connect them together with wood dowels as suggested in a comment on the 2nd page:
I also used a wooden dowel about 3 inches long that fit just inside the conduit to join the rods together above the center of the window with a more streamline look. I glued the wood piece inside one of the rods so they can easily be disconnected if you want to wash the curtains, etc.
Connecting the rods that way should provide a smooth transition for the curtain rings to pass over. That sounds like a great way to avoid the problematic "bump" which expandable curtain rods have in the location where the smaller diameter rod goes into the larger diameter rod.
Having a single bracket at each end of the rod may not give it enough support. I'd like to avoid center brackets, as usually you can't slide the curtain rings past them. However, this is another possibility: using "c-rings" which can pass across a center support bracket: Curtain Rod "C" Rings
It seems that c-rings are expensive and not widely sold. But surely it should be possible to create one's own c-rings by using a bolt cutter to cut openings into regular metal curtain rings? One would need to use the kind of ring which has a fixed-position eyelet, as otherwise the curtain clip could slide right off the ring at the opening.
The living room has 3 large windows. I think it would be best to have a single long curtain rod spanning all 3 windows.
Extra-long curtain rods are hard to find and are expensive. But I found these pages which explain how to make your own curtain rod from electrical conduit!
How to make a cheap, awesome, professional Curtain Rod
Steal this idea: Extra-long Conduit Curtain Rod
I could get 3 pieces of conduit, each about 7 feet long, and connect them together with wood dowels as suggested in a comment on the 2nd page:
I also used a wooden dowel about 3 inches long that fit just inside the conduit to join the rods together above the center of the window with a more streamline look. I glued the wood piece inside one of the rods so they can easily be disconnected if you want to wash the curtains, etc.
Connecting the rods that way should provide a smooth transition for the curtain rings to pass over. That sounds like a great way to avoid the problematic "bump" which expandable curtain rods have in the location where the smaller diameter rod goes into the larger diameter rod.
Having a single bracket at each end of the rod may not give it enough support. I'd like to avoid center brackets, as usually you can't slide the curtain rings past them. However, this is another possibility: using "c-rings" which can pass across a center support bracket: Curtain Rod "C" Rings
It seems that c-rings are expensive and not widely sold. But surely it should be possible to create one's own c-rings by using a bolt cutter to cut openings into regular metal curtain rings? One would need to use the kind of ring which has a fixed-position eyelet, as otherwise the curtain clip could slide right off the ring at the opening.