Sage – Author at Plaster & Disaster

Some people hate curtains. I am not one of those people. I think they can do a lot for a space, whether it’s just about adding color, texture, or pattern:

Or totally transforming a space, as in the case of our apartment living room:

But I have never been comfortable with how expensive curtains are, especially since I am usually using them mostly decoratively and have sheer curtains and blinds on each window for actual privacy and light-blocking (which I find preferable to constantly opening and closing curtains).

Even a pretty inexpensive panel from Target is usually $20-$30, which means $40-$60 for a single window and much more if you have multiple windows in a room. And of course that’s really the low end, curtains from higher end places can cost much much more and custom drapes look amazing but would really be a splurge for me.

Over the years, I’ve found a few ways to have more affordable curtains — more like $20-$25 per window. These cheaper options aren’t right for every space, but using them where they work means more money available to spend a bit more in other rooms when needed. I thought I’d share a few of these ideas with you today!

1) IKEA

We all know IKEA is an amazing source for affordable home goods, and curtains are no exception. The selection can be limited, but especially if you’re looking for something pretty basic and neutral you can get a pretty good deal. For instance, these Merete curtains are available for $29.99 for a 98″ pair:Personally I don’t love grommet top curtains, but you could easily cut off the top and use them with rings — that’s actually exactly what I did in our apartment living room, pictured earlier in the post.

2) Turn a shower curtain into regular curtains

When you’re looking for something more colorful or exciting, it can be hard to find good options. When I was on the hunt for curtains for our bedroom, I just couldn’t find ones I liked. And then one day I decided to look in the shower curtain aisle at Target instead, and found a million amazing options. I ended up picking a gray sunburst shower curtain from Target (no longer available) that cost about $20, and picked up two of them (one for each window). I cut each one right down the middle to create two panels per original shower curtain, turned down the top edges where the holes for shower curtain rings are, and hemmed the raw and top edges to create a totally clean look.

The two things you have to be careful with here are a) material, and b) dimensions. For material, make sure you pick cotton or something else that will make nice curtains — a lot of shower curtains are polyester or other materials that would seem weird as regular curtains.

For dimensions, most shower curtains are 72″ long which means when they are cut in half they still make nice full panels for a standard window size. (Again, I don’t tend to actually close my curtains very often, so the panels don’t need to be super full.) However, shower curtains are usually just 72″ long as well — so that means they are not going to make floor-length curtains. You *can* get extra long shower curtains, but they come in fewer variations and they’re usually ~84″ so even they won’t make floor length curtains for most people’s ceiling heights. Typically I prefer floor length curtains, but sometimes I don’t mind a shorter look, for instance in my bedroom I think it works just fine.

3) Make your own — with a twist

When you’re looking for the most flexibility in color and pattern, sewing your own curtains is a great option. I’ve found Fabric.com to be a really great place for affordable fabric in a really wide array of styles — often for as little as $9/yard even for drapery weight fabric.

But even sewing your own can get expensive — if you want 96″ panels, you’d need to buy 5.5 yards to do two panels. So even at a very reasonable $9/yard, you’re still looking at almost $50 per window.

Since I’m often just using curtains decoratively, however, I’ve found that I can get away with a little trick that halves the amount of fabric I need. Fabric usually comes in widths of 54″, so I will buy just 2.5 yards (the length I would need for a single panel) and then cut it right down the middle vertically to create two skinny panels.

Tips for affordable curtains -- Plaster & Disaster

Here’s one half of a normal width of fabric, which I would hem on all four sides to create a single thin panel

Yes the panels end up looking pretty thin, and they obviously won’t work well if you want to use them for privacy or light blocking. But if you’re just going for a little color, texture, or pattern in the room, this can work really well.

I did this in my living room, where we have a big picture window that I was not trying to make functional curtains for. To do two windows (four panels) was just $50.

I also did it in our guest bedroom, where we have roller shades for light blocking and I really just wanted the curtains to add color to the room. I spent just $20 on the fabric for these.

In this room, we wouldn’t even want to be able to draw closed the curtains because then they would block the radiator.

One quick tip: when you’re hemming your own curtains, be sure to do a double-fold hem so the raw edges aren’t visible even on the back side. This means that rather than just folding the fabric over once and sewing it down, you folder it over once and then again, sewing that down so the raw edge is encased inside the hem. Here you can see my double-fold hem along both the top and the side:

This creates a cleaner look, and helps protect against fraying especially when you wash the curtains. Here’s a great tutorial on sewing double-fold hems (you can pin and iron like she recommends, or be super lazy like me and skip those steps…).

Again, these tricks are not going to work for every space — sometimes what you really want or need is a floor length, full pair of curtains in a color or pattern that you just can’t find somewhere like IKEA. But maybe these tricks will help you save a little money in some rooms so you have a bit more in the budget when it’s time to splurge on nicer window treatments!

What do you think, would you ever try one of these in your home?

(Sharing at Pin Worthy Wednesday, Weekend Retreat Link Party, I Heart Naptime, Inspiration Monday, Two Uses Tuesday, Totally Terrific Tuesday, Tip Me Tuesday, Think and Make Thursday, Your Turn to Shine Link Party, Remodelaholics Anonymous, Thrifty Decor Chick’s Before and Afters, Link Party Palooza, and Create It Thursday.)

Two weeks ago I shared my guest room makeover, which turned our attic guest room into a light and airy space:

I did a number of DIY projects as part of the transformation, but didn’t go into much detail on any of them in the room reveal post. The emerald green dresser makeover I already wrote about (painting it and then picking new hardware), and the rest I’ll be diving into a bit in the coming weeks. Today’s topic: the map wall.

When I was initially brainstorming ideas for the room, a reader suggested that I use maps as art since we decorated the room for Sam’s sister to live in for a few months (she moved in last Friday, welcome Maddie!) and she’s quite a traveler. I loved this idea, but decided to take it a step further and make a whole map wall. There’s an awesome image floating around the internetz that has had me captivated for awhile now:

From Dos Family

I want this in every room of my home, but the guest room seemed like a good place to start since a) we had a lot of blank white walls all of a sudden, and b) everyone who stays in the guest room will hail from elsewhere so having a map up on one of the walls seems fitting. First I had to find an affordable map wallpaper or mural, though. I thought briefly about try to paint something on the wall myself once I started seeing how expensive the mural options were, but since the wall is paneled (and thus not flat) it really would be very hard to do.

I searched high and low, and then finally discovered a map mural at Art.com that was both affordable and big enough — $90 regular price, marked down on a 40% sale when I bought it (they are often — if not always — having 35-40% off sales). It ended up costing $70 including taxes and shipping, which seemed like a totally reasonable splurge compared to many hundreds of dollars I was seeing elsewhere.

It arrived in the mail pretty quickly, so then it was time to get to work. I’ve never done any wallpapering before, and was a bit nervous. It came in four separate pieces to be arrayed in a 2×2 grid, with a small amount of overlap between each panel. My first step was to unroll them and lay them all out on top of each other on the floor.

Highly technical “corner holding down” devices at work here

Next came the very tricky task of figuring out how to trim the panels to the right dimensions to fit on the wall. Not only was the mural much longer than my wall (though almost the exact right height), but since the left part of the wall is sloped, I knew that whatever part of the map would otherwise be in that corner would have to be cut off. I didn’t want the map to center on North America like is typical in so many maps, both for general philosophical purposes (why must we put ourselves at the center of the world?) and because Maddie, the room’s first occupant for the next few months, just spent a year in Chad so I wanted to be sure Africa made it onto the wall.

To get the right dimensions, I measured the width of the wall to figure out how much space I had to work with and how much I would need to cut off. Then I cut most of that off the far right of the map (ie most of Russia, and sadly Australia which is a very special place to me), and a little bit off of the far left. It involved a lot more mental gymnastics than that recap fully captures, but I figure it won’t be super helpful to go through the details since no one else is likely to have the exact same dimensions as me.

Then it was time to start wallpapering! I’d bought wallpaper paste from Home Depot:

Applying it was relatively simple. I flipped the first panel over:

And then coated it with a thin layer of paste using a regular paint brush, making sure to get the edges really well. Then I pressed it into place on the wall. To get air bubbles out, I used a credit card, and then I used a sponge to wipe up any excess paste that came out the sides. It certainly wasn’t perfect especially because I was applying it over an uneven surface (ie the paneling — best practices would be to fill all the grooves in first, but I did not want to do that), but it was good enough for me. I folded the panel in the top corner where it met the sloped ceiling, planning to cut it off later.

I repeated the process with panel #2, which bore the brunt of the sloped ceiling. Before putting wallpaper paste on it, I roughly calculated what would need to be cut off and then cut it accordingly, and then I was able to use an x-acto knife to cut off the remaining excess once the panel was in place. Just be sure you have a really sharp x-acto knife, or it could tear the paper! (she says from personal and very frustrated experience…)

Then panel #3:

And #4:

The bottom two really gave me trouble for some reason — I just could not get the air bubbles out as cleanly as I wanted, and I don’t understand why it was worse then the top two panels. But I’m lucky, because I knew it would be almost entirely hidden when I pushed the bed against the wall like I planned.

I gave it a little time to dry, pushed the bed back, and voila!

Up close it’s definitely not 100% perfect along the edges and in terms of a totally smooth surface, but it’s pretty close and if you aren’t looking for flaws you wouldn’t see them very easily.

I’m thrilled that I managed to get it centered the way I wanted, and I also love the location on this wall — it’s only visible once you’ve walked to the far side of the room, so it’s like a nice surprise and a bit of a fun secret that makes the room more exciting for those who actually stay in it.

Totally worth $70 and a few hours of time to jazz up this room a little!

Plus I’m very happy to report that Maddie arrived a week ago and is all moved in. I’ve already made her do one awkward photo shoot, so I’m sure she’s not even remotely regretting her decision 🙂