Bedroom Window

In our new house the Master Bedroom is in the back of the house. After living here a little while I discovered a few things about this arrangement.

1. Our large bedroom window lets in some heat in the summer and cool in the winter.

2. The noises from 83rd Avenue (just behind our back wall) get through the window.

3. We also have a police/fire station combo right up the street. They love blasting their sirens at all hours of the day and night.

4. Lots of light comes in the window even at night.

5. Because of the above mentioned things I knew the windows would be an issue.


Here is what happened.

1. When we moved in it was rushed. As soon as we moved in - Doug had a trip back east and was gone for a few days. He left me here alone in a big new house, unpacked, a new neighborhood, and with bare windows through the entire house. Nothing on them at all. I slept alone in the big new house with the very large bare bedroom window one night and didn't like it at all. So the next day I taped up a sheet to cover that window.

2. Soon we ordered the window shades and they were installed. That helped with a lot - privacy, heat transfer, light, noise, etc. But the window is so large (3 big panes) that the shades had to be made in 3 sections as well. And as luck would have it the spacing of those sections was unfortunate. One of the small gaps between the sections was lined up with precision so that the street light outside the house would shed one sliver of light through. Where did that sliver of light land? Right on my pillow! So every night since then I have had to place my head with care so as not to get that sliver of light directly in my eyes. It has been a battle at times but I have managed.

3. The shades we put up do not block the light - but sort of diffuse it. So our bedroom, even at night, had a soft glow to it. As the sun rises earlier and earlier our slumber ends earlier and earlier. We moved in nearly 2 years ago - so we have spent 2 summers dealing with the bright bedroom.




I am terrible at decorating and chosing colors and all that. So I dread making a decision like that. But the "JoAnn's Sale flyer" got me going. I got a great deal on some material that I thought would look good against the brown venitian plaster walls. So I bought a bunch of it. I also bought a curtain rod to hang it on. I brought the material home and just draped some over the bar and decided the window still let too much light through. So I waited for another "JoAnn's Sale flyer". And finally it came. I bought some lining for the curtains. That would solve the problem.

I spent several days measuring, cutting, hand basting the lining to the material, pinning in hems, etc. I finally used the sewing machine and got them sewed permanently. I removed all the basting and was ready to hang.





Trying to put the curtains on the rod and get the rod up on the supports was a trial. And as soon as I did that I could see that the anchors that came with the rod were NOT going to support the curtains. Luckily Doug has a whole collection of that kind of thing and we found some bigger anchors and replaced the originals. Finally, and at long last I got the curtains up.


Voila! They are great! I may need to do something to accent them but I'll live with what I have for a while and figure something out.





The wonderful part is that had I directly lined up the curtains with the shades - the gaps in both would be in the exact same place and therefore that bothersome sliver of light would still have been plaguing me. But when I put up the supports for the rods I compensated for that and just barely offset them and now there are no more slivers of light coming through the curtains - at all. It is just a miracle that I thought about that and that my idea worked. Sometimes we just get lucky I guess. And we have been enjoying some nice dark and less noisy slumbers ever since!