[Hannah]: After the apocalypse, you will want me to be your interior decorator, and other musings on home improvement projects

There's a difference between house projects that use things like fabric and paper, and projects that revolve around materials like like metal and hardware. Fabric can be negotiated with. Something doesn't fit? rip it, tie it, stretch it. I am much better at these projects than projects like Attach a Rack to your Bicycle. It's not that I can't do it, it's that I have a hard time accepting that in hardware projects, there's no stretching or negotiating to be done. If something doesn't fit, it's metal, what are you going to do, take your soldering iron to it? (Those of you who own soldering irons can just keep quiet right about now). If you didn't happen to have brought one of those from your manhattan apartment, if something doesn't fit, you just have to take it back to the hardware store. I do like going to the hardware store as much as the next guy but I hate going BACK to the hardware store. It means you have been defeated.

Anyway, the CA and I now live in a two room cottage with lots of windows. Very cool, except at night it's a little bit like living in a jack'o'lantern. We have lots of neighbors, including some middle schoolers who like to hang out in the evenings at their middle school across the street from us (and use the most frightful bad language, by the way! did i know those words when I was 11?) Plus, we're creeped out from years of living in NY - it's bad enough that there are no bars on first floor windows here. (Seriously... when did we start feeling like living in a prison was a good idea??) We moved in and needed curtains stat. A dear friend spending the summer in India offered to get us custom curtains made there on the cheap. But what were we going to do in the mean time?

Solution: Two $7 sheet sets from Target, apply scissors and push pins. (This is my favorite kind of project in the whole world):



Hmm, that looked a little sloppy. But with a bit of tailoring, better. (I eventually trimmed the bottom of this one too):


So this is great. During the day time, I can hang the loops I tied to the side of each curtain on the pushpins that are holding the curtains up. First I tried it this way.

Then I decided that wasn't very elegant so I did them this way. You can see here also the cat. She is dismayed because, though she has way more windows here than she did in the old apartment, the windows have no sills. So before we had furniture for her to crouch on she spent a lot of time in this posture. She's very long and stretchy.


I have lots more fun pictures but blogger is being bad so they will have to wait for another time. I am so good at this kind of thing. I wish there was a reality show that asked you to construct practical curtains using only scissors and a sheet set. i would win.