Home Office - Valances and Curtains and Lights - Oh My!

You've likely heard Judy Garland chant "Lions and Tigers and Bears - Oh My" when she walked the yellow brick road in The Wizard of Oz.  These last two weeks I've been walking down the path to the end of this challenge.  Specifically, I worked on Valances and Curtains and Lighting.  One of my primary goals was to hide our bookshelf clutter behind flowing white curtains.  Mission accomplished.  Here's what I did:

Valances

Structure
I used anchors and screws and wood (oh my - sorry couldn't resist!) to install a frame for my valances on the ceiling.  I attached some wood vertically from the ceiling to the book shelves below set back just a few inches from the valance frame.  I'll need this to add the curtain rod brackets for the floor length curtains described below. 

Fabric
I used a pretty organic printed fabric for the front of the valances which basically drove the color palette of this room.  I lined it with a plain teal color fabric.  I covered cording with the same teal fabric to add a neat edge at the top.  I didn't have enough material to add cording all around.  I need to save some for the window bench cushion I plan to sew.

Installation
I installed the valance with velcro.  I used the sticky back 'hook' side on the wood frame and the sew on 'loop' side on the fabric.  The valance is about 18 inches long and about 93 inches wide in the front with a 17 inch return to the wall on the right side.  I have a shorter return on the left side since no one will see that end. 

Velcro pinned to liner at the top under the cording.

Curtains

I planned to have full length curtains on both the window and in front of the book shelves.  After making the curtains for the bookshelves with 120 inch wide white fabric, I ended up with only enough to make cafe style curtains.  I'm liking them.

Curtains over shelves

100 inches long - I needed to measure and cut on my living room/foyer floor.

Both sets of curtains needed to be easy-breezy to open and close.  I hand sewed 42 wooden rings purchased at a St. Vinny's store in Madison to the bookshelf curtains.  I used clip on rings for the window cafe curtains.

One thing I am fortunate to have for my sewing machine made hemming curtains very easy.  It is a special blind hem stitch foot.  I followed instructions on how to fold the fabric and just sewed along the fold.  The end result was a machine sewn hem, with just an occasional stitch along the front side barely showing.

Lighting

I bought this light some time ago and in a prior post showed you that I spray painted it to make it a touch less 1980's!  It is installed!  There are 6 candle type light bulbs and one bulb pointing down.  With everything on, I can heat the whole house!  I've unscrewed every other candle bulb and thankfully, with a turn of a switch I can only light up those.  That's where I leave it, so the wall switch just turns those on.  Another turn and both the candle lights and the bulb pointing down are on.  One more turn, and only the bulb pointing down is on.  A final turn and all lights are off.  It turns out that the bulb pointing down is a very good option to be on when reading fine print or sewing detail stitches.

Light off

Light on

One more blog post for this challenge.

In my next post, I'll hopefully be able to pull this room all together with accessories, wall decor,  and budget, along with before and after pics.  I was able to work mostly weekends on the first 2 rooms of the challenge, but this room being done during summer hours has pushed me to work weekdays.  It's all good because I already can't wait to use the office on a day to day basis as it was intended.