Curtained Closet How-To

This project has been almost done for two weeks. Does that ever happen to you? Well, I finally sewed up the second curtain yesterday and rigged up a system to hang them, with my husband's help, of course. Yay for curtains on our closet!

I made the curtain out of corduroy and drop cloth canvas. I ripped strips to size and sewed them up, first the stripes, then the edges, then the top. It's not at all perfect or the "right" way to do it, but it works for us!

I repurposed this curtain for the bottom. I love that the rough and sturdy textures of our striped curtain have a ruffle detail at the bottom to soften them up!

Before we took over this room, this closet had sliding doors. I thought it would be nice to be able to access my clothes at the same time that my husband has his side of the closet open. Besides, stripes are in and I wanted to use them somewhere! 

Here's a little summary of what we did to hang the curtains instead of doors on a track.

Step 1: Remove the doors. My husband did this before he refinished our floors. I think it's as simple as popping the hardware (still attached to the door) off of the track up on the frame of the closet. 

Step 2: Remove the track. The picture above shows me using a screw driver. That lasted as long as it took to take the picture--the drill was too heavy to hold and photograph, but a drill is really what I used to remove the 8 screws that held the track up.

Step 3: Prime and paint the newly exposed section of your closet frame.

Step 4: Locate or purchase a sturdy curtain rod. I tried to hang this curtain with a shower curtain rod like I did in the nursery, but it only extended to 60 inches and our frame is 63. So close! I thought about using some sort of pipe from the hardware store but forgot to look when I was in town this week. Enter this amazing curtain rod! I forgot I had it stashed away in the basement. We used it in our last house. Sometimes it pays to be a hoarder hold onto things!

Step 5: Remove finial. It just unscrews from the end. I'm thinking of a project I can do involving two finials...

Step 6: Cut rod to size. Yes, folks, this rod was too long, the first attempt was too short... I felt like Goldilocks. Oh well, my husband is handy like that and it didn't take him 5 minutes to come back with a perfectly sized curtain rod. 

Step 7: Add clips to your curtains. I chose these so-called 'cafe rings' because they were cheaper than the other curtain clips you see around blogland, and they looked like they'd be super secure. 

I ended up having to steal borrow my husband's pliers to get the little suckers open enough to fit the fabric into the jaws of death. Seriously, that curtain is not going anywhere! I'm not sure these clips would be the right choice for delicate fabric or something that you are squeamish about. I think they'd leave a permanent mark.

Anyway, I used 7 clips per panel--the $2 package holds 14. I folded each panel in half to help with the spacing: One at each end, one in the middle and two on either side of the middle. 

Step 8. Hang curtains on your rod before mounting the hardware. At least that's what worked for us. That's right, we hung the curtains on the rod, then lined up the hanging hardware and screwed the whole shebang into the closet frame. Um, yeah, that doesn't make sense to me either. 

Basically, because our curtain rod is just shorter than the width of the closet, we won't be able to remove the rod once the hardware was hung. We will have to unscrew one of the hooks before removing the rod. Each hook only has one screw, so it won't be hard. We hung three hooks, by the way; one on each end and one in the middle.

Before showing you the finished project again, let's look at the inside of the closet. Last time I showed you the in-progress picture it looked like this:

My handyman added a second shelf to make this closet more efficient. I painted it white, then we added the rest of our stuff.

My husband likes to keep his non-dress pants on his shelves.

I prefer to keep stuff in baskets on my side of the closet. One holds swimwear, another has sweaters ... 

Now our closet looks like this fully loaded. Besides the clothes in the closet, we each have a dresser for underclothes, socks, t-shirts, pajamas and, for me, pants. We keep our jackets and coats elsewhere, but that's it!

When we first moved here, all of the closets were grungy on the inside and wood on the outside and the trim. When my oldest son lived in this room by himself, I painted the trim white and added chalkboard paint to the doors. I was always so disappointed it didn't cover evenly--I used the whole quart and did about 4 coats! 

When my second son moved in with his big brother, I reorganized their closet to look like this. I shared more of it here. 

Again, this is how it looks today:

Aaaaand .... curtains!

Only four more projects to finish and our room will be DONE! Just for fun, this is what I have left.

1: Change out hardware for our faux roman blinds--the rods are too far from the wall.

2: Hang trim around ceiling. Have to paint it first. Boo!

3: Fill and patch holes. Yes, I always have extra holes...

4: Make some art. I have a great idea!

Day 27