One Room Challenge Week 3: Curtains + Rugs

[ nightstand | lamp ]

Welcome to week 3 of the Fall 2018 One Room Challenge! If you’re not familiar, every spring and fall, 20 featured designers selected by the ORC team participate in a 6-week challenge to decorate one room. The event is hosted by Linda Weinstein of Calling it Home and Better Homes and Gardens. In addition to the featured designers, hundreds of other folks with blogs (and Instagram this season!) join in on the challenge as Guest Participants <— that’s me.

If you’ve hopped over to this post from the ORC website – welcome! I’m Emily, this is my blog, and I’m working on undecorating the 1929 tudor-ish home I share with my husband, Andy, and our corgi, Penelope. This is my second One Room Challenge (last season I made over our guest room). I am glad you’re here!

Week 3 is a weird week where some things have been ordered, others have not, many decisions have been made, yet others have not. I’m trying to think through each decision, to share with you what I learn along the way, and that’s just what this week’s update is: an exercise in overthinking in curtain and rug form.

I can’t remember just when it happened, but I’ve fallen in love with a certain kind of curtain. I was seeing these beautifully styled curtains, deeply compressed, tidy but just slightly untidy. And then I found myself scrolling through Pinterest, seeing those perfect curtains and holding my laptop mere inches from my face saying out loud “what is that pleat?!”

Euro Pleat Curtain Inspiration

[ source: Style by Emily Henderson ]

[ source: Amber Interiors ]

[ source: Amber Interiors ]

Tailored but lived-in. Modern but traditional. Just a dang dream.

That perfect pleat is called a Euro Pleat or Top Tack. And it is being underserved in the DIY internet. If you google DIY euro pleat you’re going to be bummed when you find a youtube video titled “how we create euro pleat drapes” and where you’ll just find a poorly edited, eternally long video of a woman pointing at euro pleats but never telling you how they’re made.

How to DIY a Euro Pleat

I know a lot of what I’m seeing are custom panels. I’ve splurged on the furniture in my room and don’t have room in my budget for custom curtains so I’m DIYing this. My plan is to double up on regular panels so I can get that rich volume and add that sweet euro pleat held up by curtain rings with clips. Magic. The best resource I found is a helpful PDF from Rowley Company on how to sew Euro Pleat Drapes. It has detailed info on how to create two and three finger euro pleats and helped me get a close visual on exactly how the pleats are … pleated. Plus, now I know exactly how much fabric should comprise my pleats (about 6 inches) and how much space there should be between pleats (about 4 inches.)

For my curtains, I’m using curtain panels from IKEA – my favorite budget source for long curtains. I grabbed the LENDA panels in light beige (I pronounce LENDA in my head like someone yelling LIIIIIINNNHDDAH!) which are also a favorite of Young House Love who recently wrote about making cheap curtains look more polished. They are so affordable at $24.99 for a set of 2 but just need some help to look polished. They are improved ten-fold by removal of the top tabs and a proper hemming. Pleating will remove a lot of the width of the curtains so I’ll be doubling up – there will be 2 panels on each side of each window, sewn together to make one wide panel. And if that’s not enough, I’ll add more until the curtain rods fall out of the walls.

Let’s Talk About Rug(s)

The clock is ticking on a rug decision. My hangup has been choosing the right number of rugs in the right sizes. Do we go for one rug or two? And what size? Is it ok to have a rug that is narrower than the total footprint of the bed+nightstands?

I was pretty set on doing a 2 rug layout in my initial plan, but a very nice commenter said, hey, why not 1 big rug? And at first, I thought, “impossible!” I didn’t want to cover the original footprint of the fireplace and I didn’t think I’d be able to find a rug in the right giant size. But I’ve realized that the footprint doesn’t matter, it’s flush with the rest of the floor and finished the same, so if a rug overlaps it, who cares? And heck, big rugs exist. I think?

I’ve been thinking this through in the best way I know how: messing with my SketchUp layouts. The big pink rectangles are rug placeholders.

Option 1 solves some my anxiety around having the nightstands grounded by a rug, but it is a tight fit. The 9′ x 12′ rug just hits the edges of ends of the nightstands. The 2 rugs in this plan help to create different zones (a sleeping zone and a dressing/staring into the fire alone zone) and lets me properly ground the big furniture elements, but seems choppy.

Option 2 means that the width of the rug doesn’t extend to match the edges of the nightstands AND means that they don’t stand on the rug at all. The dresser lands mostly on a rug but not entirely. Despite these drawbacks, I think it seems like the better solution. Finding the right 11′ x 14′ rug that costs less than a car is going to be its own challenge.

Which option do you prefer? Would the ungrounded nightstands drive you nuts? Would the 2 rug situation make you itchy?

Things that are done:

• Nightstands are here
• Bed is in transit
• Curtains are here
• Curtain rods + rings are here
• Electric fireplace has arrived
• Fireplace surround plans have been tidied up
• DIY gallery grid frames and mats have been ordered

The still-to-do list:

• Rug(s)!
• Mattress
• Bedding
• Lamps
• Hem + pleat curtains
• Hang curtain rods
• Photo prints for gallery grid
• Tile decision + order
• Begin work on fireplace surround (eek)
• Other art?
• New dresser
• Selling/hoarding existing bedroom furniture
• End of bed bench?

If you’d like to catch up on the previous weeks’ updates, check out:

Week 1: The Main Bedroom Plan

Week 2: The Fireplace Plan

Remember to follow along and see what the Featured Designers and Guest Participants are up to!