Sheer Ease

It's a rainy rainy day here. You would think that would mean things would be cooling down, making painting the front porch more feasible, but weather.com says no. Yes, it's a lovely 72 degrees right now, but it's pouring buckets. And it looks like the buckets will keep coming for the next couple of days, and then the temperature will shoot back up to 93 on Thursday.

Maybe I should have started working on the den in the summer and focused on the front porch in the fall.

Anyway, I did do a little something around the house today. I added a pretty sheer to the back door.

Here's our back door.

And, look at that, we have a trash can. I always feel like you never see trash cans in shelter-blogger's pictures. I will not be ashamed of my kitchen trash can. I've never been a fan of the trash-can-under-the-sink thing. I don't like it when I'm in someone else's house and I have to ask where the trash can is.

Anyway, back to the door. I've said many times that Adam travels for work frequently. And, as a young woman home alone I get a little...jumpy at night. And whenever I walk into the kitchen, I'm a little afraid I'll see someone standing at the back door. I wanted to put something up to give a little privacy from the porch.

This is, of course, ridiculous, because there's a giant picture window in the dining room, just to the left of this door that I don't want to put any kind of window treatment on. "Privacy" is a bit of a joke.

Okay, bottom line, truth be told - I just don't like the look of this door that much. It's blah. And our back porch is equally, if not more blah. Since replacing the door and/or remodeling the back porch is not in the cards right now, I was just going to cover it up.

So, I bought a couple of these magnetic adjustable curtain rods at Big Lots ($11 each).  Cheap, adjustable and totally non-permanent.

And enter 1 panel of Alvine Rund curtains from Ikea. My Mom used these to make some new sheers for some french doors in her house and had 1 panel left over, so she gave it to me.

It has a pretty but modern pattern to it

These being curtains, they had one pocket already sewn at the top. So all I did was attach the magnetic rod to the top of the back door (which is metal of some kind, probably steel) with the curtain on it. Actually, first SOMEONE interrupted my curtain hanging

Bessie knows that in order for any decoration to truly work in our house, it must first have cat hair on it. That way everything matches. So, after our fat little furball was gingerly removed from the fabric, I hung the curtain.

Enter furball #2, Daisy. But she only sniffed and moved on. With the curtain hung, I slid the fabric behind the bottom curtain rod to get an idea of where to cut the fabric. I then marked that spot with a pin.

I took the curtain back down, cut the bottom off and proceeded to measure, fold and pin the fabric to get ready to sew it. I knew my curtain needed to be 68" long, since I measured from the top rod to the bottom rod. 

Then it was a quick dash up the steps to my sewing machine to sew a straight stitch across the top edge of my fold. If you're not skilled with a sewing machine, you could easily do the same thing with some Heat 'n' Bond.

That done, I rehung the curtain and DONE.

Lovely, no? I might cut the width down one day, so it's not as wide and would just be a straight panel, with out the foldy-pleaty-ness, but I like to live with something for 2 weeks before I decide to really change it. And I think my favorite part might be that this is easily taken down to wash. I also really like how it doesn't really block any light coming in.

And, as always, how much did this whole thing cost? $22. Go me.

Hoping to be showing off the print I finally got for the guest room as soon as it arrives and I get it framed, and then that room will be done! Hooray!