All Because of a Candy Striped Shower Curtain

Sometimes you get lucky and stumble across a cinch piece. That perfect bit of art, fabric, or furniture that can tie a whole room together. With that single discovery, everything else just clicks into place. It's wonderful!

Sometimes you get really, really lucky and you stumble across a cinch piece that is 100% FREE! Woot!

A couple of months ago, my sister switched apartments. In the process, she went through all of her belongings and gave away a bunch of stuff.  I gleefully took some of her clothes and linens. I'm a serious sucker for free stuff. It's a problem.

So there I was, standing in the kitchen, staring down at my new pile of linens, and contemplating their potential uses... when the light bulb went on.

"OH MY GOODNESS!!!!! THAT STRIPED FABRIC WOULD MAKE PERFECT KITCHEN CURTAINS!!!!"

Everything snowballed from that point on.

If you give Caroline fabric for curtains, she'll want a new wall color to go with them. If you let Caroline pick out a new wall color, she'll want to switch out all of the art work. If you let Caroline switch out all of the artwork, then she'll want to turn her door into a chalkboard. If you let Caroline create a chalkboard list making location, she'll want to completely rearrange all of the furniture in her house. Et cetera.

See. Snowball effect.

Personally, I blame my sister Sarah. She gave me the "must change everything around once a month" bug. You'd think as a physician's assistant that she would warn me it was contagious, but did she? No. Wench.

I'm leaning more and more towards bright happy blues and greens in my home lately. So, I pulled out all of my cheerful turquoise/teal blue paint chips and after about 5 minutes of deliberation and elimination, I settled on Eddie Bauer's Signature Weathered Glass.

It's super cheerful. Like "you WILL smile while you scrub dishes" cheerful. When I first painted the kitchen, I kept waffling back and forth between, "I LOVE IT!" and "OH, GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE?!?" Now that I've lived with it for a while, I definitely love it.

Anyways, back to the destiny of that fabulous striped fabric. After coming across fixed flat roman shade tutorials at both Centsational Girl and Fly Through Our Window, I'd been itching to make some for my kitchen. So I put on my sewing cap and got to work. In my kitchen. Is it weird to sew in your kitchen?? Inquiring minds want to know.

Did I mention that the striped fabric is my sister's old shower curtain?? Yes. You heard me. Her shower curtain. Crazy, I know, but when I cut it into fourths, there was just enough fabric to make shades for all four of my kitchen windows. It was meant to be.

I had some black out fabric leftover from the nursery.

 So, I lined each of the four pieces of the shower curtain with it.

After that, it was simply a matter of figuring out the width and number of folds and tacking them in place.

I slid dowels into each of the folds to keep them from sagging. As for hanging the curtains up, I used the rods from the icky old vinyl shades that were hanging in the house when we first bought it.

It took me a while, but it was actually a super easy project. And I'm in love with the results.

They are fabulously bright and cheerful. They make me think of candy stripes. And candy is always good, right?

Ignore small child consuming mandarin oranges. He's not relevant to this post. Oh, who am I kidding. He's cute and fantastic. Please admire him at your leisure.

The burgundy stripe in the fabric perfectly complements the cabinets while the rest of the stripes allow me to bring a variety of other colors into the room.

Wait, could that be a triangle hanging next to that ridiculously long and unrealistic "to do list"? Surely not. She doesn't really announce dinner with a triangle does she?? Nuts.

Yup, my candy stripe shades give me the courage to play with such colors as turquoise, green, and orange. Colors make me happy :). I need rainbows, stat!

Now I just have to figure out how the hell I'm going to build a sink surround.

And finish gluing/sanding/varnishing the counter top to the right of the stove.

Maybe build some more shelving, install some backsplash, and rearrange everything. You know, just a few small little tasks that need taking care of. *sigh* It's only been two years. What's a little more time?

I was determined to wait until the kitchen was completely done before showing it off to you... but it's been over a month and I can't stand it anymore. I'm more of a "Hey, look at my progress!" kind of girl. So, here are a few before and afters:

Before - Beige & Bleh

I have a sneaking suspicion that Hurricane Joseph has been in the cabinets again.

After - Colorful Awesomeness

Before

After

Before

After

I think the shades work really well with the rug as well. I'll share more about the artwork in the kitchen in a later blog post. For now, I'm just going to enjoy my candy striped windows.