Hang It Up

This past weekend, I finally took the time to hang up the curtain rod I bought in October! I mentioned last week that one of our "resolutions" for the year was to start hanging things around our apartment - from curtain rods to curtains, artwork to pictures - the bottom line is that much of our walls (and windows) are bare. For the holidays, I asked for the 12V Black and Decker Cordless Drill that John and Sherry over at Young House Love use for almost all of their projects. I asked for it with a few specific projects in mind - hanging our first curtain rod being at the top of the list!

Don't they look so naked?
I bought this curtain rod at Bed Bath & Beyond - and used a 20% coupon! I only bought one to start because I wanted to make sure we liked it before I spent money on curtain rods for the remaining 4 window areas in our apartment. It was difficult to find a curtain rod to cover our large window span - coming in at 125". The one I found was just enough to cover it at 128".


I took it out of the box and set out all of the pieces in front of me. Then I got my new drill out of the box and let it charge while I was preparing to hang the curtain rod. First, I measured the window again, and decided that I wanted the brackets to be placed 2 inches in from each side and for the bottom of the bracket to be 2 inches up from the top of the window. Using the brackets as my guides, along with measuring tape, I used a pencil to mark off where I wanted to drill.

They look uneven at this angle - but I promise that they're not!
I repeated this step with the 3 brackets all across the window. Then, as I was preparing to start drilling, I realized that when I drilled, sawdust from the drywall was going to get everywhere. With the dog, and a sofa nearby, I decided that this would not work well and so I came up with a solution to stop the sawdust from going everywhere:


Using a small box (for me, the top to the box my new phone came in), I used painter's tape to secure it to the wall. Using 4 small pieces on the inside, 1 large one across to secure it and 1 long piece attached to the bottom of the box coming around the front and securing to the wall above so that it would be in the best position to catch the sawdust.


Like I said above, I used this Black & Decker 12V Cordless Drill (and a 3/16 drill bit as instructed with the curtain rod hanging instructions) to drill my holes:

Note: That's a Phillips head in there now, not a drill bit. 
Going slowly, one at a time, I drilled all 6 holes needed to hang the curtain rod!


In doing so, I moved the catching box to each new spot I drilled - it was easy to detach and re-attach under each set of marks. Below is a picture of what it looked like after drilling just 1 set of holes.


After drilling all 6 holes, it was time actually install the brackets. To do this, first, I put in the wall anchors:


Then, using my handy dandy awesomely pink hammer (I am such a girl sometimes), I hammered the wall anchors into place.

Let's ignore the chipped nail polish, please?
Wow - that wall does not look pretty. Good thing the brackets hide it!
Once the wall anchors were all hammered into place, I was able to use a screwdriver and screw the brackets into the wall anchors. I was able to do this by hand for the middle and right brackets, but the left bracket required the use of the drill as I am not a lefty and couldn't properly anchor myself on that side of the wall.


I repeated this step - screwing the screws all the way in of course - for all three brackets. When I was done, the result looked like this:


With the brackets all in, I put the rod together (you can see it in pieces to the left in the picture above) and hung it up on the brackets.


Finally, I took the old curtains I had from my last apartment and hung them. Please note that I will be changing out curtains (these are clearly too short) and getting a formal tie back system in place - for now though, I'm just using some old ribbon.


And a close up of that unfortunate, but good in a pinch, ribbon tie:


I did this all while Josh went out on Sunday afternoon and totally surprised him with it! With the colder weather officially here, we are both so excited to have curtains in place! Like I said, these aren't permanent curtains, but they work for now. Installing this curtain rod was so easy - the whole process didn't even take 30 minutes - and I cannot wait to go back to Bed Bath and Beyond to get 3 more curtain rods to go on our other 3 window sets (another in the living room, one in the den/2nd bedroom and one in the master bedroom).

Have any of you made any small changes with a major impact lately? I love to hear about all of your projects! I hope you have a wonderful Wednesday and I will be back tomorrow with a quick book review (of The Long Goodbye by Meghan O'Rourke) and a wonderful recipe to go along with it!

CONVERSATION

3 comments:

  1. Great way of catching the sawdust! Hanging curtains makes such a mess. I have the same drill and we use it for everything!

    ReplyDelete
  2. @Lindsay Thanks! And I am so glad I got this drill - it's perfect!

    ReplyDelete
  3. You can also cut thick-walled a rubber ball (about the size of a basketball will work) in half and push the drill through the middle

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