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D-I-Y Draperies

We own a discount drapery and upholstery fabric store. We help people decorate for less. We recommend sewing yourself or finding someone to do it either as a favor or for a low price. Family, neighbors, church, and the local senior center are all excellent places to inquire. Someone always knows someone else who sews! Between being frugal about fabric selection and not paying top-notch "workroom" labor prices, you will be able to get beautiful window treatments for not-very-much money.
DF

Enjoy the Fruit of Your Labor

I recently moved to Las Vegas, NV into the nicest house I have ever owned. It has very high ceilings with tall windows. Beautiful, but definitely nonstandard and hard to cover. Fortunately, the former owner left the vertical blinds on them. But the blinds by themselves are ugly and utilitarian. I must keep them to ward off the strong desert sun. Without them, our living room would be over 100 degrees or more!

To solve this problem on an extremely limited budget, we fashioned curtain rods from PVC pipe, attached wood finials to the ends, and painted them black. (A little scratching with a pin helps make it look like wood or iron) Eighteen feet above your head, you can't tell the difference. They look like the real thing! We bought the longest tab top curtains we could find and so what if they don't reach the floor. I went to a home improvement center like Lowe's or Home Depot and bought very long, cheap, voile scarf valances, cut them to size, hemmed the one cut edge and gracefully draped them across the rod. They're gorgeous and hardly cost anything! And every day I get to see the fruit of my labor, which wasn't much considering how much a job it could have been.
Bonnie

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