School Daze

For those of you who’ve been waiting on tenterhooks since I posted “They laughed when I sat down at the piano” to know whether my curtain rods worked, sorry for the delay – don’t you hate it when your day job gets in the way?

But yes, today was the day I tried to put it all together.

Curtain rods, carefully crafted out of branches collected last fall on a trip to the Trinities – check

Universal curtain rod brackets, found on Amazon (these were my second try – the first ones I bought were made out of wrought iron and looked really cool online but turned out to be way too small) – check

Curtains with extra-large grommets to fit around the sticks, snarfed on totally killer sale at Macy’s – check

Howard’s Feed n Wax, to “cure” the sticks and make the grommets slide more easily – check

Trusty Makita drill – check

First, I tried putting the rods and brackets together.

One end fit...

Branches being branches, they’re thicker at one end than the other, meaning one end fit; the other didn’t.

The other didn't

For once I’d curbed my natural tendency toward impatience and I’d held off on applying the Howard’s Feed n Wax for this exact reason, so my first move was to shave down the thick ends til they all fit in the brackets.

Shaving it down...

Next came the Feed n Wax – put it on thick, let it sit 20 minutes, then wipe off any excess (vinyl gloves are good for this as it’s pretty greasy).

The tools - my Craftsman sander, the Feed n Wax, and the exceedingly stylish utility knife I found in my Christmas stocking

Putting up the brackets was pretty easy – mark, drill a couple of holes, sink a couple of screws. OK, my husband had to fix one for me, but I did 9 out of 10 on my own. Yay for me.

Brackets

Aside from balancing on a ladder while drilling holes and sinking screws over my head – Ladies, note this is also excellent for the triceps, tho you might not want to do it every day – the only tricky part was securing the branch in the bracket once the branch had been made heavier by hanging 108” curtain panels on it. But once I figured out that I could slide the smaller end through and then come back to the second bracket with the thicker end, it wasn’t too bad. And the good thing about these brackets (compared to the ones I had to return) is that they have a little screw that tightens to hold the branches in place.

I did have to do some serious surgery on the branch I dubbed Big Boy to shrink him down, but even that wasn’t too bad.

Big Boy meets stylish utility knife

We have curtains!!!!

I'm just sayin...

Curtains!