Officially an Amateur

It's time!

That's curtain time, for the uninitiated. And my face says it all.

But having taken the edge off my nerves with my shower curtain repair, I was ready to at least make a start, one step at a time. So I laid out the fabric (very painstakingly chosen - seen here)

And then it was a matter of measuring it so that I could cut it into four panels.

I discovered that it's really hard to get a straight line across the fabric that actually looks like it's straight - so that each of those little teardrop shapes lines up perfectly with the next one.

Once each panel was cut (we cut them quite a bit longer than the length we actually need, just so we don't waste any of the fabric, and can potentially extend them and reuse them in a different room later on), I folded the edge of each long side over a few centimetres and ironed the fold to make it nice and crisp.

But before I was willing to attack the fabric with the sewing machine, I decided to have a practice run with my orange thread on an old pillowcase. Just to make sure I wouldn't totally ruin my fabric with awful stitching.

And then the dreaded moment came when I had to actually put needle to curtain (or future curtain).

This is my look of intense concentration.

And this was my first hem! Pretty embarassingly crooked I'm afraid, but thankfully the orange thread is almost identical in colour to the orange in the curtains, so it's pretty invisible.

I repeated that process with the other long edge, and then moved on to the bottom hem. I measured in 20cm from the bottom edge of the fabric, and then folded the fabric along that line.

And then I ironed that fold line so it was nice and crisp.

I did then also fold the edge back underneath (and even did an angled fold in the corner so it would look nice and neat from the front, with none of the hem peeking out around the edge), and then I ironed it too.

Then came the tedious-ness of repeating that process with the three remaining panels, leaving only the top edge of each one untouched. This was because I was missing one very important piece of information - how long my panels needed to be! As I mentioned in this post, we had to make a trip to IKEA to be able to buy some curtain ring clips, so I could then figure out exactly how much distance there would be from ring clip to floor.

First though, we had to actually install the brackets for the curtain rods.

And then the rods themselves. We discovered some time ago that the cheapest option for a curtain rod was at Bunnings. $20 for a simple extendable one that comes with brackets. They come with pretty unattractive scroll-like finials, but you can always swap them for something else.

Unfortunately the screws that come with the brackets always break, so we had to use some of our own, meaning they stand out a bit. A touch of trusty black nail polish fixes that problem, though!

So then came our IKEA trip and the acquisition of the long-awaited curtain ring clips, which I eagerly piled onto the rod.

And then I simply ran a tape measure from the floor up to where the fabric would sit in the clip, to determine exactly how long each curtain panel should be.

Four repetitive top hems later (with some measuring and re-measuring of lengths to ensure the curtains would just skim the floor), and then the grand unveiling (or veiling?) could happen!

This was a very big moment for me. I sewed curtains!

And thankfully the bottoms just skim the floor a tiny bit, just as I wanted them to!

When I was first planning curtains for this room, I had thought I would also put a panel on each side of the doorway (the one we built), but because there is very little space between that doorway and our shelves on the left, it wouldn't really work.

Plus, it might have been just a bit much orange in the room having the curtains spread around like that. I think the two panels either side of the big window are probably just enough colour, particularly since I bought a few orange folders to put in my shelves on the other side of the room (above).

The addition of the curtain now makes my gallery wall above my desk even more bright and cheerful (although still unfinished, as you can see - one step at a time).

I think I now officially call myself an amateur sewer. Can you believe I made curtains?!!!

A Fling with Filing

Back to the office again! We've talked about shelves, calendars and staplers. So why don't we really let our hair down and talk about filing! Are you excited?

See the wall to the right of our doorway (while it was still under construction)?

Well I had high hopes of having a little row of filing cabinets along the right, butting up against that wall. The problem is that the wall isn't particularly deep. About 450mm, to be exact. Which is a bit too shallow for a normal filing cabinet to slot in there without sticking out into the doorway space.

And then one Sunday afternoon as I was procrastinating and reading our junk mail, I came across this in an Officeworks catalogue!

In case you can't see, it says the depth of the little cabinet is 432mm! Perfect! And the price is pretty good for a brand new little filing cabinet of the perfect size!

So I went to Officeworks first thing on Monday (actually I had to go to two of them because the first one had sold out), to get me a pair of these little babies!

They fit perfectly along that wall, with my new fancy printer/scanner. But unfortunately the black outsides were looking pretty dark and gloomy, so I wasn't satisfied with just leaving it at that. So I got my poor obliging husband measuring...

And this design was born!

We decided to build them a special timber cabinet, to cover up most of the black, and create a nice high flat surface on top for me to use.

Tom paid a trip to the local demolition yard and bought a few VJ boards to act as the vertical supports...

Which he screwed together using pieces of thin board that we'd salvaged from elsewhere in the house.

While he was at the demolition yard, he also bought this old door, made of VJ boards.

Daniel and I sanded it, and removed the hardware.

And then it got a few pieces of the same thin board across it, to hold it together nicely.

And then the assembly process began in earnest!

And then, almost by magic, it was ready! In the interests of getting it installed asap, we just gave it an undercoat, and will paint it properly later.

Into the height of our cabinet we had factored in resting these little plastic sets of drawers on top of each filing cabinet. They're obviously a bit wider than each of the filing cabinets, meaning we have a gap either side of the filing cabinet, but that taller storage will come in handy for a few things.

We're very proud of how snugly the printer fits in.

We decided to raise it up as high as possible, with a makeshift shelf that leaves enough room for paper underneath.

And the best part? We built a hinged lid!

We cut out the section of the door above the printer, and reattached the original door hinges on top.

They'll look a lot better once they are painted white, but I like them, and I think it's nice to keep a reference to the fact that the top of the cabinet used to be a door.

So that's my fancy new filing cabinet cabinet!

It's not the prettiest thing we've ever made, but it's certainly an improvement on the black metal/plastic of the filing cabinets and drawers.

And the hinged lid for the printer works very well.

But also closes nicely to give me a lovely big flat surface if I'm not using the scanner.

A few of the edges probably could use a bit of trim to disguise the join between top and sides, to make it look a bit more finished.

It balances the room out nicely, sitting across from the other cabinet that we painted.

So that brings us yet one more step to getting that room complete! Next, I'll show off whether or not my sewing skills have improved in finally getting my new curtains up!