Office Makeover Part 2: DIY Striped Curtains

After I finished "painting" the wall, I decided that the windows also needed some serious help.  The office originally had these disgusting army green colored window coverings.  They were covered in spots of paint and a thick layer of dirt.  To top off their ineffectiveness, the only way to adjust them was to untie a rope and pulley system from the wall and start yanking to see if you could get anything to happen.  About the only thing this was good for was creating dust clouds.  Here are the lovely original window shades:

With a bit of hard core screwdriver twisting, this roll of plastic coated canvas has now been thrown into the hallway.  Somehow, I don't think anyone is going to wander by and claim them...

As a replacement, I made myself some striped curtains.  My favorite resource was the following blog post:
http://justagirlandherblog.com/diy-painted-striped-curtains-tutorial/

I too used craft smart paint (only $0.50 at Michaels during sales!).  I used 20 ounces of citron colored paint for both curtains.  I did mix in a bit of textile medium, but since I am not planning to wash these it wasn't really necessary.

Instead of using curtains, I bought a couple of white flat twin sized sheets from Walmart.  Most flat sheets have a 3 inch wide hem on the top.  If you rip the seams on either side of this hem and resew the edges to leave an opening, you have curtains for $4 each!

Each of my stripes was about 9.25" wide.  Blue painters tape worked great- there wasn't any bleeding.  Reminder:  account for the width of the tape when measuring the stripes!

 

I used a foam brush to apply the paint instead of a roller.  Rollers tend to splatter, and I rather like the look of the brush strokes through the curtains when the light shines behind them. 

Curtain hardware is expensive.  There are very few tension rods that would span a 100" wide window, and they aren't cheap either.  Instead of doing traditional curtain hanging, I reappropriated a couple of the screws from the old blinds and tied about 10 lengths of fishing line between them.  Fishing line is about $2.50.  I wrapped a piece of duct tape around the bundle of lines and threaded them through the resewn hems of the sheets. No, it doesn't look as classy as a curtain rod would, but it is a decent looking window covering that can block out the sun when necessary!

For added support I suck a command hook in the center of the line, mainly to prevent the curtains from sliding towards the center:

And here it is!  Finished curtains!  A HUGE improvement over the previous canvas thing, don't you think?