Own Homership

12:30am, 2 May 2018
I own a home. Well, a condo, so a space in a cooperatively owned building. I moved in in July of 2015, so we’re going on three years now.

When I moved in, I took certain steps—fast, cheap, easy steps—to do something about light control and privacy, on the assumption that sometime when I wasn’t trying to move, or when I wasn’t broke, and had a little time to think about it, I would do something more permanent. So off Rob goes to Canadian Tire (Canada’s all purpose hardware/garden/kitchen/sports/automotive store) to buy tension rods and vaguely translucent shower curtains This solution served, mostly, until quite recently, when it turned out that vinyl shower curtains don’t like hanging in west-facing windows for three years. The one in my bedroom developed a crack, then a small hole. Well, someone is trying to tell me something.

Except I’m still basically broke, and trying hard to actually work productively prepping for a ‘summer term’ course that start on Monday among other things, so I don’t have a lot of spare time for mundane activities like laundry or cooking, let alone actually putting up curtains. I also am not sure, despite years of watching home improvement and design shows, that I know how to put up curtains. Slightly complicating the procedure, I do not at present own a working drill, or a sewing machine, or for that matter a working iron. I own several measuring tapes because a few weeks ago I got tired of never being able to find one and bought three fabric-style ones. Somewhere in this house there is a proper 15-meter jobber, and somewhere at work I think I 6-meter one, but I have no idea where exactly either is at the moment.

The good news is that at least psychologically I’ve been preparing for the day I get curtains. I’m pretty sure what color I want. I know I want blackout. So these in the second bedroom.
But hardware? Do I want to hang these loft style (with the rod going through tabs at the top, or from hooks, or clips? The IKEA ones have a fourth option, which is to run the rod through what amounts to hoops built into the top of the panel. The IKEA curtain rods are kind of limited, but silver, gray, or black finish? Do I need sheers, and therefore a double-curtain rod? Where does one place a curtain rod relative to a) the ceiling (or in my case the bulkhead, and b) the window frame?

Okay, I’ve worked out that last bit. The rod itself is supposed to be something on the order of 6-8 inches wider (that is 3-4 inches on either side) of the window frame. IKEA rods are pretty forgiving, in that the brackets go wherever they go, I presume into some kind of wall stud, and the rod just sits on them. Now, those years of home improvement and design shows tell me that there has to be a stud just on either side of the actual window. My problem is that I have 4-inch wide trim around my windows that I’m pretty sure are where the studs are, and so there’d be nothing immediately outside of them. So that means I need to be prepared with some kind of wall anchor. Which I am not confident about.

Now where the curtain rod goes depends partially on how the curtains are hung. So if I go with running the rod through the loopy things, I guess the very tippy top of the curtains can just brush the bulkhead. So I guess I should buy them, put the curtain rod through them, and just measure where their best placement is.

Nor am I entirely confident that I know how long they should be. I figure anywhere from ‘just covering the top of the baseboard’ to ‘almost touching the carpet’ will do, but I can’t tell how long that really is until I know how the curtains are hanging. Which means I probably have to figure out where to hang the rod, then hang the curtains, and measure, take the curtains down, and hem them.

This is problematic, not just because I’m freaking lazy, don’t currently own a drill, or anything I could hem curtains with, but because of one of my several ongoing ailments. Readers of this blog will recall that I had frozen shoulder in my right shoulder, which I’m happy to report has resolved and I have close to 100% of my movement back. The unfortunate thing is that my other shoulder has now gone, and which means raising my left arm too much higher than horizontal is pretty much impossible unless it’s Unless it’s straight forward, in which case I can get a little higher, depending on what I’m trying to do with my hand. But it ain’t fun.

So back to the bedroom curtain. As I was making my bed with freshly laundered sheets, I brushed up agains the brittle and falling apart shower curtain in my bedroom window and it disintegrated. Seriously, just fell apart. So there I am, 11pm or so, just wanting to make my bed and go to sleep, and I have to do something about my bedroom window dressing.

The only other curtain-like things in the house are a) the one in the second bedroom, which because I don’t often make contact with it is still intact but probably not in much better shape in any real sense;  b) the one in the second bathroom, which I suppose I could have pulled, but it’s beige and brown and anyway I’d just have to put it back when I was done, and c) a cheap vinyl shower curtain liner I bought as a backup to the one in the second bathroom. I opened up that once and realized it was seriously clear, which defeats the purpose of putting it in my bedroom window.

Ever the innovator, I decided to grab one of my old, rarely-if-ever-used-anymore, sheets. I tried a fitted sheet that for some reason didn’t fit on my bed anymore, but, well, it didn’t hang properly. So knowing that a flat sheet would be hard to get to stay up, I went with an old duvet cover. I could put the tension rod inside the duvet cover and get full coverage.

This tension rod isn’t spring loaded. It basically just unscrews to let you shorten or extend it, and screws to lock it at the length you choose. So you kind of have to be cagey putting it in because you have to get it tight enough to stay up because you can’t do much adjusting once you get it in place. So naturally at this point—apparently having not seen this far ahead—I discover I can’t grab hold of the curtain rod the the duvet cover to screw or unscrew it. I get the bright idea of climbing into the duvet cover with my curtain, but then I manage to jam the curtain rod so it won’t unscrew. (Just putting my hands around the curtrain rod and holding it and the duvet cover while the rest of me is outside the duvet cover is a non-starter, because I can’t hold the rod and the duvet cover over my head with my bad shoulder.)

Much comical hijinks ensue, what with climbing out of the duvet cover, getting the rod stuck in the duvet cover, stepping on the edge of the duvet cover, and so on. After about 15 minutes finally I get it to unscrew, get back into the duvet cover with it. It takes several tries to get it up because I’m in the duvet cover and can’t see what’s happening in the window frame. This isn’t comfortable at the best of times. Wrestling the whole thing cause serious pain, such that I had to stop and sit down a couple of times. Which means, of course, the curtain rod/duvet cover set up would move around weird so I’d have to wrestle it back into alignment so I could try again.

So an hour or so later, I have a workable temporary window cover. I hope it doesn’t have to last another three years, but I have a workshop on Thursday, a conference eon Friday and Saturday, and I start teaching my ‘Summer term’ course on Monday and I haven’t really made much headway into prepping that yet. So it won’t be until at least June probably, although some evening I may just bite the bullet and buy curtain panels and proper curtain rods and hardware. And a drill. And maybe some steam-a-seam and an iron.

In the time it took me to write this, it’s still up, so I’m hopeful it will at least last until morning. In part because I went in for my tire swap this morning and one of my summer tires was shot, so I needed to replace the two older ones, and they didn’t have any in. Which means I’m driving a loaner, which is kind of fun. Push button start (weird), rear-view camera (love), heated seats (shouldn’t have been necessary but actually today was nice). Only two doors, which means the door is heavy and long, so not great for my shoulder, or getting into the back seat, but whatevs. I don’t have to get back there. Which makes me want to update my car, but busy, sort of broke, and there’s more pressing matters, like bedroom curtains. (also the whole second bedroom, that that’s also another story.

Morning update: It’s still up, so it’s going to stay there until I get around to doing something about it, or it falls down again. Now, if anyone has any suggestions for the 8-foot sliding glass door assembly in the living room, let me know.