Window Treatment Day

It was a surprise learning how long it can take to put up window treatments.  Today we had 3 valences-only installed in our family room and quite a different set of "treatments" installed in the Garden Room.

First the easy ones put up by the very proficient young man who installed all our blinds earlier in this re-do.  We talked, he measured, we talked, and he measured again.  Then he installed the first and larger one, and I fell in love.  The next two were smaller but a little more tricky.  They went up above the high windows where the roof comes down from a peak.  The tricky part is managing to get the valence as high as possible without ramming it against the ceiling where it meets the wall.  We talked, he measured, and then he installed first one and then the other.  In this first picture you can see the entire family room with all three valences.

In this close up of the end of the room, you can see the larger valence.  This picture also shows the wood burning stove and my desk.  The fact that the valences are covered in the fabric on my chair and on the pillows on the sofa in the TV area unites the two parts of the room which I really like. The thing I had worried about in this new configuration was the two parts would seem separate.  While they are clearly designed for different activities, to me they now seem like a place where many people could be comfortable doing their own thing but still be together.

Okay.  That was the easy part.  Next came the Garden Room.  Well, trying to figure out exactly how each piece was supposed to hang and then do the math to make it all come out correctly was quite a piece of work for both the installer and for me (you know how good I am at math!).  Plus all the pieces of hardware that had to be assembled and then put in exactly the right spot - whew, we were talking about ⅛ of an inch!  You get an idea from the photographs.

In the first photo you can see the complexity of the installation (although the color isn't accurate):

And here is how it looks from the doorway.  Looking at these pictures, I realize it's not really possible to see all the work that was entailed.  The cream colored linen drapes are mounted on wooden rings that are in turn on a spliced wooden rod.  Then the handkerchief draped valence is hung with fabric loops over a spindle.  Everything had to be measured 40 times (yes, I exaggerate, but you should have been here!) so nothing would show that shouldn't, and things would be evenly spaced.

I think we should all just be grateful we don't have to do that job.