Raise the Roof!

Or raise the curtain height in this case.  I have been starting at the curtains in my living room for a year and a half wishing they were longer and finally go around to matching up the fabric to do so.  This week I actually have 2 curtain projects to share with you but today's is the simpler of the two and thats adding length to a curtain. 

Here is a before shot of the living room (kitchen has the same curtains at the same height)

I decided that it would look better if the curtains were at the ceiling height so off to Joann's I went in search of a fabric match.  It was pretty hard to find an exact match but the color match was very very close.  The store associate actually made a great suggestion to add ribbon to the seam to try and make it look pretty seamless so I decided to go with that idea.  As a side note...none of this requires a sewing machine.  Arguably it would have been better if I had sewn it, but since I cant sew a straight line to save my life I figured hem tape would work better.  Below is after the curtain rods were taken down, and you can see what a big difference even sheers make to a window.  It looks so boring and bland, but with the curtains it brings more life into the home.  Dont get me wrong its cool if you dont want curtains, I just happen to prefer having them.

Here is what i started with...

 Thats the bottom of the curtain and the fabric that I used to make it longer.  First I measured with width of the original and cut the new fabric plus 1 inch on either side to match.  The 1 inch on either side is to make the hem so that the unfinished edges dont show.

 Here you can see the pinning of the hem.  What I do is first pin the hem, then iron over it so the hem stays down then I insert the hem tape between the fabric and the edge.  Make sure you read the instructions on the hem tape so you know how long to leave the heat on for.

 Here is a closer shot of the edges hemmed down.  Not the best shot but you get the idea.  I did the 1 inch hem on 3 edges to make sure there were not going to be any unfinished edges showing.

 Above is a better picture of all 3 edges hemmed and ready for the next step

 To attach the extra length put the original curtain face down and the new addition face up so they are back to back.  The white line you see at the bottom of the brown is the hem tape before I put it in between the 2 fabrics.  Once you have both fabrics as close to perfectly lined up as you can, put the hem tape between the 2 pieces of fabric and iron away.

 Once them hem tape has had about 1 minute to cool flip the extra length piece down and then iron at the seam to help it lay flat.  As an extra step I also flipped the curtain over and put a piece of them tape at the seam as well.  Since both fabrics were pretty heavy it helped to have the extra bonding to keep it from flopping around.  If you have a lighter fabric this wont be necessary.

Now for the decoration.  I have a hard time with straight lines so ribbon really is my best friend and helps me hide a host of problems.  Same is the case here, so I put hem tape on the curtain where I wanted the ribbon to go (aka cover up a mess haha), put the ribbon on top of that and ironed it all together.  Below you see the sheers have also magically grown in length as well...well I spent another 2 hours taking a seam ripper to them to make them longer.  These babies had like a 6 inch hem on them which was great because that meant I didnt have to add any length to them I just had to take the seam out.  Major score on that one.

All in all I had 4 curtains to do and it took about 3 hours to do all 4...and thats including distractions from the dog and the TV shows I was watching...oh and another 2 for the sheers.  Truth be told I am actually going to move these curtains to the kitchen with their sisters because i want to make a sheer valance for in here...but seeing as I used all my fabric allowance in here and the bedroom that will have to wait a few more weeks.  Oh and cost on this, the fabric was $13.50 for 3 yards, $5 for 2 spools of ribbon and $3 for 2 rolls of hem tape.  Total for this project of 4 curtains is $21.50.  Not bad considering you cant really buy a 100" length curtain for that price!

My back is killing me from all the sitting on the floor but I think its worth it, makes the room look taller and it was pretty cheap to do as well which always makes me happy.  Do you have curtains you like but would love to make longer?  Whats holding you back?!

Project Housewife Out!

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Custom Headboard

A little over a year ago my husband and I moved into our first HOUSE...not an apartment, not a town home but a real brick house.  We were so excited to finally have a real place to call ours and only ours.  The only drawback was there were so many rooms I just didnt know how I was going to fill each room, but one thing was for sure, I wanted a new mattress...a KING mattress.  For those of you sleeping on a queen right now you can relate to this.  My husband is not a small man, so on the queen bed I was lucky to have 1 inch to call my own space.  I really hate being touched when Im sleeping, yes I know Im crazy but thats just how I am.  So this queen bed was a NIGHTMARE for sleeping, plus the mattress was way past the "8 to replace" so I justified it that way too.  Well let me tell you, we went to Mattress Firm and go a Latex/Memory Foam hybrid mattress and O...M...G it is like heaven on earth.  It does get hot at night, but Ill take sweaty for a back that doesnt hurt in the morning.  So anyway, I have this big awesome king sized mattress (for under $700 by the way) and no frame to go with it...ok I have the ugly metal thing from the mattress place but no pretty headboard and what is a room without a bed set.  I was looking in Potterybarn's magazine (always a bad idea if you are looking to furnish a home on a budget) and saw this awesome headboard for $1200.  I wanted to share a link with you but I dont think they make it anymore because I cant find it.  Well I didnt have $1200 to spare so I thought it would be brilliant to make our own, I mean my dad is handy with carpentry, and my husband (at the time) is always up for a project, so we set out with the plans.  I searched online for a great tutorial but there really wasnt one, but I did find one on how to do the tufting so I went with that and let the boys do the cutting on their own. 

I have been sitting on this post for a while because honestly I didnt want to type everything out and I didnt have step by step pictures to show and this really does need step by step pictures.  Well wouldnt you know, over at Schue Love they did the exact same thing (sort of) and had the tutorial for you.  I wanted to link up to their site so you can check out Schue Love's amazing site and see her far superior job of tufting.

You can see mine here isnt really tufted, see the girls at Schue Love are so smart, they used zip tipes to hold the tread in place.  Well I have to tell you I had a few bloody fingers that day from trying to hold the string REALLY TIGHT to get the tufting look and then stapled, yes thats right I said stapled, the tread to the back of the headboard.  It was not easy, it was frustrating, and in the end it didnt look 100% like I wanted it to, but I made it from scratch and I was proud of it.  I wanted to add my own notes to the Schue Love tutorial so check them out and then check my notes.

First, I wanted the awesome Potterybarn pattern for my headboard so we sketeched it out paper then went to the plywood.  An awesome trick to make perfect circles is tie a string to a pencil, hold down one end of the string to the center of where you want the circle and then the end that has the pencil you draw your circle.  Really cool right!  Well doing the half circles and straight lines was a little harder to make them perfect but it took a lot of measuring and eyeballing.  I totally stand by the mantra "Measure twice cut once".  Dont ever forget this because it will save you so much money in wood (which is more expensive then I remember)!  Once everything is traced get the jigsaw and get going!  We used a jigsaw because of the non-straight lines we had on the headboard, but it you are just going to do a square you can just use a regular saw (its easier and faster than the jigsaw trust me)

While the boys were outside cutting the wood I was inside prepping my "upholestry station".  I found this beautiful white micro-suede in the upholestry section of JoAnn's and bought 6 yards of it (we all know I buy WAY too much fabric, I ended up only using about 3yards).  I first laid down the fabric face down, the added the egg crate mattress pad thing...do you guys know what Im talking about?  Its the  yellow thing that is at walmart that goes on your bed to help with your back.  Well rather then spending the hefty price tag of the padding at JoAnn's I bought one of those to use as the padding.  In retro-spect I should have gotten 4 to make the padding ticker but I bought 2 (I needed each to sit next to each other so I could get it wide enough for the headboard).  Also while I was at JoAnn's I found some awesome clear crystal buttons that I thought would be so much more fun than upholstered buttons on the headboard so I got those too.

Back on track, so I have the fabric and the mattress pad laid out, now I put the plywood on top and get to cutting.  I start cutting around headboard, not listening to the mantra I just told you to never forget.  I think thats why my tufting didnt come out super great.  Like I said go to Schue Love , they have a much better tutorial on how to do the tufting but let me share my mistakes with you.  First was I cut the fabric and then second was I stapled the fabric to the back of the headboard before I did the tufting.  You can see from the other tutorial that they didnt cut the fabric or staple the fabric until AFTER they did the tufting.  Im realizing that now and kicking myself for not doing that.  But I do love my headboard and I did it pretty much without any instruction.  This was also pretty much my intro to home projects and I have to say Im proud of it.  Evern though there are things I could have done better, there are things I could have done much worse too.

I bet your wondering how to hang this bad boy...Well I'll tell you, you need special hardware and its hard to find it.  Eventually we found it at Ace Hardware.  I dont remember the name but its interlocking plates.  One plate is screwed into the wall and the other is screwed into the headboard.  You will want to get 2 sets to have one plate set on each side of the headboard to make it super escure.  WARNING: its pretty hard matching this plates up headboard to wall so be patient and definately have someone help you because two people are usually better than one.

I hope you enjoyed this post and are super PSYCHED to get started on your own headboard!  Have you made a headboard?  I would love to see what you came up with, share it here!!

Project Housewife Out!

Easy Custom Mirror

I have a confession...I LOVE my bathroom.  Ok so there are things I want to change but that requires construction, but the bathroom as it is right now, I love my bathroom.  This is the 2nd attempt at my bathroom though, the first try just wasnt my style and I decided to change it.  My husband was none to happy (he hates painting) but the new result I love so much.  Ok enough with the love fest, Im going to tell you how to make these awesome mirrors.  I hate the builder standard mirrors, they are so boring and plain I needed something more original.  Before I tell you how to make this, here is a list of supplies that I used, but feel free to make this project your own:

• Mirrors
• Frame to fit mirrors (color of your choice)
• hardware to hang mirror
• mosaic tiles (color of your choice)
• super glue

I have to say I was really lucky, my old town home had these two great pieces of glass in one of the closets and I knew I had a great use for them.  I did have to get the class cut a little to make the pieces even and it fit in the frame but that cost a whole of $10, compared to who knows how much a mirror costs I know I did great on that.  The frames I used are 24x36 white wood frames from Michaels at 50% off there were a great deal for $30 total.  The tiles in the corner are mosaic tiles from Michaels at $6 each they spice up the corners and really make the mirrors look custom.  To set the tiles on the mirror, we put them where we wanted them first then set them with super glue (you know the kind that will glue your fingers together).  We let that dry overnight then added the hardware to the back of the frame.  For some reason these frames didnt come with anything to hang them with (silly Michaels) so we had to go to Home Depot to get hanging materials.  We bought the heavy duty hangers that interlock so they are very sturdy and wont fall off.  Each frame is probably around 25pounds so make sure you get hardware that can support the weight you have.  Once you get your hardware up, hang the mirror and you are good to go. 

(sorry for the elbow shot :)  )

On a side note, if you do have the big builder standard mirro you can always frame that or you can take it to a glass shop and they can cut it for you.  I was going to repurpose mine in the dining room, but unfortunatley my dog knocked it over and broke it into a lot of little pieces so that was a total waste (let me tell you I was pissed when I saw all the glass on the carpet, what a mess to clean up!)

Have fun spicing up your bathroom, I would love to see how it turns out, post a picture or comment of your bathroom change-up!

Project Housewife Out!