Pay No attention to That Dog Behind the Curtain

Always the economical home remodeler I try to do everything on a budget... and by that I mean I try to do everything I want/need to for our home while still keeping us afloat, eating food, paying bills, saving money... etc, etc. My husband and I jokingly watched "The Money Pit" when we bought this house, laughing at Tom Hank's antics and the wild adventures of his fictional home ownership.

The living room while the home belonged to the previous owner...

 a little crowded, no?

Now, two years into being home owners, we've: replaced the same ceiling twice; found out that half of our second floor was leaning on a non-load bearing wall and causing our home to slowly implode; ruptured a well pump; nearly had a jacuzzi tub fall through the ceiling from our master bath into our living room because all of the floor joists had been cut by a previous owner (why, Geoffrey? WHY!?!); walked on bare concrete and tack board for three months due to a carpet mix-up; overflowed two backed up air conditioners flooding an entire closet below (which I tried to fix with ingenuity and pots & pans but botched horribly in my husband's absence) and generally suffered a host of other home related maladies and disasters. It's not a joke people. The money pit is real.

Knocking out the archway. You can start to see where we are going with the project.

   Anyway, in the few rooms that I feel are getting close to finally being "done" after two years, my living room has been limping towards completion for about nine months now. It started out as two rooms, a formal sitting room and a family room, and we knocked a huge archway out; stenciled the walls; and put down new carpeting. The windows were a problem because, now that we had a great room, you could see from the street directly through the house especially once we had some awesome recessed lighting put up to light up the place. I had thought I would be remodeling the dining room first, but due to a massive water leak, the living room moved up the priority list.

Walls painted (soon to be stenciled) & carpet waiting to go down...

     I'd bought goldenrod curtains on clearance from JCPenney's for a shockingly good deal, but due to only having two windows in the dining room I'd only bought four panels and the new living room had three windows. Undeterred, I created one "giant window" flanked by one panel on either side for one set of windows and devoted the other two panels to the remaining window.

The curtains in between stages, after we added the extra silk at the top.

Oh, and did I mention the curtain were way too short for the living room and the curtain rod hole was much to narrow for my "$60 marked down to $9.99 plus a 20% Off coupon" wooden rods from Bed, Bath & Beyond, so I had to get Mama to add a 4-inch tube of chocolate silk to the top of each one? Yeah... miserable...

The finished product...

    Now, to the problem of sheers. I bought sheers from JCPenney; they were awful, so I returned them. I bought clearance sheers from West Elm, they ran out mid-shipment and I only received four instead of the six I needed; returned as well. And then I lusted after these sheers from West Elm for months... months... and finally last month I thought, "Every budget, and every wife, has their breaking point" so I logged on (thankfully they were running a special for $10 off each panel... it's the little things) and finally more than $200 later I am pleased. I know it's not true economy but sometimes, you can only be so thrifty and still keep your sanity.

"Ugghh... these curtains are really cramping my style..."-Atticus

   The only downside to the new curtains is that Atticus, our oldest spaniel, likes to use the front window as a vantage point to lay down and observe passersby with the sill as a chin-rest. These new curtains really put a crimp in his style and he was none too pleased.... "Can a dog catch a break around here?" he says... nope, sorry... Mama needs her sanity... and her privacy... but I still love you, Atticus. A lot.

"You're killing me, Smalls..."