Dining Room Curtain Reveal ... Finally!!

I mentioned on Monday that we had purchased a curtain rod, brackets and some rings during our impromptu IKEA excursion on the weekend, and while I'm sure you've guessed by now what we used them for, I'm so excited to make the big reveal!!!  But first, let's go back to beginning of the curtain saga for a quick recap ...

Do you remember way-back-when, when I was obsessed with finding just the right fabric for our dining room?  I cleared out Designer Fabric Outlet for their samples and laid out oh, say, a hundred of them on our dining room table to live with for a few days.  It looked more or less exactly like this

Try though we might, however, none of them really felt right.  And then I did a little surfing and through a post written by Jennifer at Rambling Renovators, I was turned on to Tonic Living.  Their website was awesome, and I must have ordered a thousand or so swatches, all of which ALSO littered our dining room for days while we tried to make a decision.  I found my favourite straight away: a beautiful teal fabric with a magnolia branch and blossom pattern that made my heart stop in my chest.  What would look better against our window that frames our magnolia tree, than a magnolia fabric?  Easy enough for me to decide, but hubby wasn't convinced.  In fact, he hated it.  Couldn't even look at it.  And despite my protests to the contrary and much effort to convince him otherwise, he wouldn't be swayed.

In the meantime, naturally, the universe decided to mock me a little bit.  In that same week I received that month's issue of House Beautiful, and what did I find among the pages?  This.

Not cool, House Beautiful.  Not cool.

It renewed my commitment to win Daryn over to the dark magnolia side, however, so that night I launched a new attack and wonder of wonders, it worked!  I got the green light!  I'd like to think he came around because the fabric grew on him over time, or because he saw the wisdom of my ways and decided I really did know best.  I'm guessing he agreed just to shut me up, though.  But whatever!  Victory was mine, and I ran with it!!

Several weeks flew by with no news of my curtains.  There were back-orders, delays and shipping issues from the supplier.  But once the fabric actually arrived at TL headquarters (more than two months late), Tonic Living made amazingly quick work of the project and soon enough my drapes were on my doorstep: YAY!!!  And happiness looked a little something like this

Now I won't lie to you: seeing them all packed up so neatly in a big, bright, busy pile renewed not only my love for them, but also Daryn's skepticism.  He had been keeping it fairly well in check during the waiting period but receiving a huge lump of fabric that we couldn't take out of the box (for fear that the kids would ruin them before we could get them hung) didn't do anything to placate his concerns that they would be too loud, too garish, too busy and too turquoise-y (though for the record we have nothing against the colour turquoise, either individually or collectively, that I am aware of).

And now the search was on for a curtain rod and brackets that would both span the 9-foot window and hold the weight of the curtains which, to cover a 9-foot window, is not insubstantial.  We hunted high and low, searching for rings and rods that wouldn't break the bank: we searched in vain.  Home Depot was the priciest and Home Hardware the least expensive, but even so we would have been looking at a $60 price tag at minimum.  Not so bad if they were going to be displayed, but as our dining room has a built-in valance so these bad boys weren't even going to be visible, which made sixty bones seem a bit steep.

I had all but lost hope but in the excitement of the holiday season I didn't give the curtains a second thought, to be honest.  Which brings us to this past weekend, and a spur-of-the-moment trip to IKEA, and a BIG SALE.  We managed to snap up some curtain rings (with clips, since the curtains are simple panels), a rod and three brackets for $25.  Yes, you read that right:

  TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS!!!  

THAT is a price I can live with.  And of course, having purchased the hardware we needed there was no question as to whether we were going to wait until the next day and a reasonable hour to hang those babies.  At 1AM Daryn pulled out the drill and away we went!  We yanked down the old tracks from the ceiling and badda-bing badda-boom, a little zip-zip here and there and we were done.  Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.  And now, our dining room has gone from this ...

to THIS ...

From thiiiiiis ...

to THIIIIIIIS ...

And my favourite view of all?  Looking from the living room sofa straight through the office to this ...

I am seriously in love.