Monday, July 9, 2012

Cheapest Ombre Curtains Ever... (Probably)

The 2nd bedroom closet (aka the Reading/Rocking Nook of Fantastic-ness), Part 4

I had removed the bi-fold doors to the closet as soon as we moved in. Because they were ugly, like the rest of the room. I wish like heck I had taken a before picture of this whole room. It was horrible. A BAD beige paint job that had dripped onto the baseboards as well as the blinds on the window (yes, they got paint ALL over the blinds).  Then someone (I don't know how many people were party to this terrible paint job) decided to paint over the beige with some shade of blue. I don't know what shade it was suppose to be because they only painted one layer about a quarter of the way down the wall. So the top quarter of the walls was a washy blue/beige vomit color, and everything beneath it was a dripping beige.

Then there was the ceiling. It was painted a darkish blue except for a border around the edges measuring about a foot, which was (a dirty) white. Was this on purpose? Was it laziness? I'll never know.

There was also a ceiling fan somewhere underneath a foot of dust and grime. And a grayish/brown carpet that was covered in dirt, glass, and what looked like petrified hairballs.

Why did we rent this place? Because if we cleaned it up ourselves, there was no deposit! Yay! And because we were living with my in-laws (I don't care who you are, two families+one house=hard).

Anyways, we tore out the carpet, put down some cheap linoleum that was likable (no reimbursement but I wasn't going to put my son in that room with years of dust and dirt underneath that carpet). We painted the walls a Smokey Powder Blue (I don't know where the smokey adjective came from, the color has no hint of smoke). We painted the ceiling white, and completely dismantled the ceiling fan and got her clean and sparkly. Also replaced the beige painted blinds and painted the baseboards white.

Which brings me back to, I also removed the bi-fold doors to the closet. Because they were ugly and had been painted badly in the same darkish blue that the ceiling had been.

Aaaaanyways...

I wanted to hang curtains in front of the closet to kind of dress it up a bit. And since I like to pile on the charm, I couldn't just throw one trend in (chevron wall), I had to do it big:

(Pink!) HOMBRE! curtains!

And being me, I did it on the cheap and easy.

Supplies:

1 full size white flat sheet
Heat-n-Bond hem tape
1 package Tulip fabric dye (Pink)
1 bucket (3-gallon or bigger)

I folded the flat sheet in half vertically and ironed it. Then I cut down the pressed line I had created. I followed the directions on the heat-n-bond hem tape to hem the edges I had just cut.

Wa-la!: Two curtain panels.

 I then followed the directions on the package of fabric dye, filling up my container with super hot water and mixing in the dye till it dissolved. I then used a pony-tail holder to mark how far I wanted the dye to go on the curtain panels (I used one pony tail holder around both of them so that they had the same amount of dye on the same spots) and quickly dipped the panels in the bucket of dye and pulled more out slowly letting it stay in longer as I got closer to the bottom. I let the last part sit a total of half an hour I think.

As I pulled the curtains out and wrung the excess dye out, I discovered how easy it is to transfer the dye all over the curtains, including the white parts at the top.

Make sure you don't do that.

But if you do, squirt some hydrogen peroxide on the spots of unwanted dye, and that will help them disappear.

Alas there was a part two. After waiting forever for them to dry (I hung them over the shower curtain rod in the bathtub and also on a drying rack in the laundry room, the difference between the top and bottom shades was not as perfect as I had hoped for, the top being way too pink. Thanks to a little googling (instead of using my brain), I figured out I could dip the top (lighter) part of the curtain panel into a bucket (or bathtub) of bleach water and fade the color out a little more.  This also helped completely get rid of the dye spots that had ended up at the very top of the curtain panels where it was all white.

So I soaked the upper parts of the panels in a bathtub full of bleach water, I used a little more bleach than water. I left most of the top part in for half an hour or a little longer.

Then I let it dry... again...

I don't like waiting, can you tell?

But it was worth it:





































The cost break down:

Full size sheet from thrift store: $2

Fabric Dye: $3

Heat-n-Bond tape: on-hand (I can't sew)

Making both panels total: $5, or $2.50 a panel!

Yay!

P.S. I hung the curtains by using the already hemmed part of the sheet at the top. I cut two slits one inch apart every five inches to create tabs.

1 comment:

  1. I would rather have your reading this on podcasts, maybe that should be your next endeavor! Seriously though, I am very impressed with everything your doing so far, it might make it on to my copycat blog.
    Seriously,
    Rebekah A. Boo

    ReplyDelete