Our living room occupies the southwest corner of our house. The west facing window is big. Really big. Huge in fact. It's ten feet wide. Yeah, ten. And it faces west, so it gets a ton of sun in the afternoon. In the winter, this is nice, as it gives a bit of extra warmth. And year round it gets a ton of light, which is also nice. But in the summer it gets hot. And in the four years we've owned this house, we haven't put up window treatments in that room. Clearly we need them. But we can't figure out a solution.
Here are the issues.
- The size. No blind/shade/etc. company makes a blind/shade/etc. that is ten feet wide.
- The fact that the window is actually five smaller windows (and the center plus the two outer ones crank out). So getting two blinds/shades/etc. that are each half the width means that any gap in the center will let in light. So we'd need to do five separate things. And we'd still risk having light come in between the blinds/shades/etc. since the frame between them is narrow.
- As noted, three have cranks. So we need something that won't get in the way.
Anyone have any ideas? We're currently thinking of making (or having made -- I'm not much of a seamstress) a set of super-wide curtains with some overlap in the center (to avoid the light coming in) and hanging them on a long rod. We think we'd have to make the rod ourselves, since we haven't seen one long enough, but that should be fairly easy. It would have to be mounted on both ends and in the middle.
I must admit, I'll miss having that super-bright room, but it'll be nice to be able to have a little privacy on that side of the house, since that's the corner of our corner-lot (i.e. both sides of the room face a very close street).
6 comments:
We just got heat/sun/noise blocking curtains for our bedroom and they work so well. They make the room at least 10 to 15 degrees cooler during the day.
Hi K! Thanks so much for posting that twins blog on my page. You would think I followed more twin blogs but I never seem to find the time to search for them! So thanks! I think the curtain idea is better than blinds. Maybe you want to add a double rod and do a sheer underneath...that way you have an in between option. Plus I don't know about you but I've always loved the look of sheer curtains gently blowing from a window. I guess it's calming for me :) Just a thought!
make sure that you use blackout lining, at least. it will make the curtains hang better. as for the rod, we had the same problem with a twelve foot window. we bought the longest metal rod we could find, and then bought another one that did not have any finials on the end, so that it was open at both ends. place the wider opening on the smaller rod with a finial, place the smaller open rod in the larger finial rod, and then join them together. this works best with tabbed curtains. just make sure that the brackets have the screws to hold the rod down, as it will tend to move a bit when you open and shut the drapes. hope that helped.
We have giant sliding glass doors in both our living room and bedroom, in addition to a large west-facing picture window. I agree with everybody else: insulated curtains are your friends. We got our 10-ft rods at JCPenney's. We then bought individual panels of insulated curtains and sewed them together vertically to make them long enough for the window. Much less expensive than custom-made, and they work great for keeping the room cooler.
I also have a huge 10-foot window in my living room. We had vertical blinds put up. "Blinds To Go" sells blinds in every size and color and they're very reasonably priced - cheap professional installation as well. See if there are any locations near you. We were very happy with them.
You can also check out Ikea online. In the stores, they have these giant fabric panels that they use for window shades, wall panels, room dividers, pieces of art, etc. They're on rods and attached to a sliding rail system on the ceiling. You could easily layer five or more and slide them around to control the light as you wish.
(By the way, thanks for visiting my blog, and thanks for your sweet words. I appreciate them immensely.)
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