Curtains - and how to get them for less!

I admit it.  The thought of curtains costing about $1000 per room scared me.  But I don't like the idea of not having curtains very soon after moving in.  And with our anticipation that we'll be getting told about handover dates soonish (people are indicating 4 - 6 weeks after lock up after all!) I'm starting to think about stuff like decorating and what we need to do (eek! like buying or ordering our fridge!).

But this last few days have been exploring curtain options.  I wanted a tracking system.  Something that glides smoothly.  I also like curtains as opposed to panels, vertical blinds, roller blinds, plantation shutters or venetians (or romans or anything else).  At least for this particular house.  We haven't really done curtains before.  Not properly.  We had tab tops in one of our early houses where we didn't have enough and we just bought them off the shelf and they looked pretty ordinary to be honest!

This time I want the Pottery Barn look.  (You should know by now if you have been following along I do like that look!)  But I want the curtains to go to the ceiling too.  And our ceiling height should be around 2590.  I'm not sure what it will be once we add the floor (need to allow 11mm for the floor).

This is what I think I'll end up with:

Here's a linen based curtain from Pottery Barn:

Did you know that curtains are expensive?  I was at Spotlight today working out the amount of material I'd need for some of our stacking doors.  Our stacking doors are 3224 wide.  And add to that the 'sides' we need to allow 'more' and at 2 - 2.5 x material that would be 8 metres at 2590 drop (plus you need to allow for hemming etc).  With fabric tending to be about 140 or 145cm wide, that would mean 6 panels of 2.7m per 'set' of curtains.  That's 16.2 m of fabric.  And at a discounted price of $20 for one of the ones I liked it should be a bargain, right?  $324.  For ONE set of curtains!  And to that I still need to add in the curtain header and do the work!  hmm...

IKEA to the rescue -- and my sister in law!  

The reason I thought that sounded expensive is that I had gone to IKEA the day before.  (Did you know they are open to 9pm even on a Saturday night???)  the plan was to use IKEA's Kvartal system to get the ceiling mount we want and cover it up if need be with a pelmet.  Unless we can get away without a pelmet -- but then I'd want to spray paint the rails so they aren't so silver.

Here's a few pics of the Kvartal system ceiling mounted:

The trip to IKEA was with the intention of viewing the Aina curtains which looked good on the web and in my app:

Esp given they were already a 2500 mm drop!  (most curtains are 2130mm drop).  As you can see in the pic the rail is pretty much hidden depending on where you add the hook (although that doesn't help when you have the curtains open...)

But when we got there, we liked the Ingert better.  And it was $30 cheaper per pack!  Woo!

Lots of calculating later I've worked out for all our window needs except for the home theatre (leaving that for W to work out what he wants), we can get by with 25 packs of the Ingert (keep wanting to call them Ingbert -- prob too many Dilbert cartoons in my lifetime!) curtains.  At $50 a pack that works out to be $1250.  The curtains still need to be lengthened by about 8 cm each - so I'm buying two additional packs of curtains for the material - and joined together to get the right width.  

We'll need 6 sets of 2 panels each and 10 sets of 3 panels each.

Not bad I think!  

And I've asked if my sister in law can help sew them.  She sews for a living so I've insisted that she gets paid by me for the work she does.  It's still going to be a lot cheaper than getting custom made curtains and I suspect she is super fast and things like straight line joins will be super easy and super quick!  I just need to go and get the 24 packs of curtains now (I already have one pack so I could check out what it looks like as I was hoping there was extra hem to steal from... there is a bit but definitely not enough to steal that much!)

Rather than the tie backs in the picture above I want to get the hold backs from Pottery Barn:

I still need to work out the calculations for the Kvartal system but I think that should be the easy bit.  I just need to work out how much space on each side of the windows/doors I need to park the curtains.  I worked out for one of the rooms the Kvartal system should be around $40 which includes the rail and the corner bits and the ceiling mounts.  

Ceiling mount $3 each (need 2 per 140cm track)

Corner piece $5 each

Single Track Rail 140cm $10 each

Kvartal glider and hook (24 pack) $4 each

So I'm glad that's worked out.  

I figure I can get a S Wave type look with spacing the hooks appropriately. Or at least that's what the internet seems to be indicating!  (Ebook if you want to download it yourself here).  One of the takeaways is that they need to be an even number of hooks and it needs to be approx 10.5cm apart.

So curtains seem to be sorted in a fairly economical way.  W needs to work out his own home theatre needs but he's keen on the Kvartal system too.  His may not need to be painted or covered up with a pelment but when we first get in everywhere will just have to be 'good enough' for now.  (The other option is paint it white so it blends with the ceiling.  Undecided for now.  Silver it will be in the short term).

Before I press the go button and almost clear out the stock of the curtains from IKEA I just need to measure the height of the floor to ceiling and allow my 11mm for floors.  I don't want the curtains to drag but I definitely don't want to get harry high pants looking curtains either!