Monday, January 28, 2013

Nursery Stuff: Curtains

This post about picking curtains ended up way longer than I'd intended, but it was a huge ordeal! Scroll to the very end if you just want to see the final product. I promise I won't be offended.

I may be hopping on the chevron bandwagon a little late here, but I've had my heart set on teal/aqua/turquoise chevron curtains in the nursery since I first started thinking about nurseries over a year ago.

I've always loved these ones:

ErinandEvan via Etsy

However, at $200 per panel ($200 x 4 panels = Danny murdering me in my sleep), it just wasn't feasible. (I have to be frugal from here on out; remember my $1k rocking chair?) In fact, all of the lined, quality chevron curtains I could find were way out of my budget.

I contemplated having a crafty friend make some curtains for me, but I couldn't even find an affordable chevron fabric, so I quickly dismissed that thought.

I was starting to think I was screwed, but when we finished painting the nursery, I couldn't shake the notion that some light, airy curtains might look nicer in the small room than the thick ones I'd been imagining all along.

I remembered seeing these sheer zigzag curtains on Urban Outfitters' website back in the day:

Urban Outfitters Zigzag Curtain

At the time, I'd deemed them too cheap looking, especially for the price, but I thought they might fit the bill now. I headed on over to their website, and lo and behold, they were still there—and they were 40% off! $19 per 84" panel. Fate? I think so.

I ordered 4 blue ones (the packaging slip actually refers to these as "aqua") and 4 gray ones, obviously planning on returning one color.

When they arrived just a few days later, I couldn't wait to hang them, and when we finally did, holy crap, we had some problems. UO doesn't show them hanging in pairs on their website because they're apparently not supposed to be hung in pairs, as evidenced in the following photo:

OMG (And ignore the rod placement. That's just where they were before.)

I hung all 4 aqua panels on one rod to better depict what was going on. Do you see it?? Not only did the zigzag patterns not line up at all (look at the very top of the panels to really see what I'm referring to), but that isn't the lighting playing tricks on you—each panel was a different shade of blue!

I was blown away, and as much as I liked the aqua, I didn't want to deal with exchanging them in hopes of getting 4 that were the same color, because even if I did get 4 of the same color, would the zigzags match up? Probably not.

The gray panels had issues with color, too, but it wasn't nearly as obvious—and I probably wouldn't have noticed had the blue ones not given me such a discerning eye. The zigzags didn't line up on the gray ones, either, and since I decided to go with 96" panels anyway, I sent everything back in exchange for 8 gray panels, hoping I could find 2 somewhat-matching pairs somewhere in there.

Why does everything always end up being 10x more difficult than it seems like it should be?

Mismatched curtains everywhere.

There was lots of this going on:

Different grays, different zigzags. Nice job, Urban Outfitters!

It literally took me an hour to come up with 2 pairs of curtains with patterns that were kind of the same. I didn't try to find one pair of curtains that matched another pair of curtains. There was no way that was happening. I was happy to find 2 sets of 2. If that makes sense. When all was said and done, here's what we ended up with:

Pair #1

Pair #2 (I swear they somehow look worse in this picture than they do in real life.)

Very imperfect. Having 2 sets of curtains that don't match each other (or even themselves, for that matter) would drive some people insane, and I know my final product probably isn't for everybody. Truth be told, I was bothered by it in the beginning, but now, I find it kind of charming.

Another shot of Pair #2 to prove that they're not completely horrendous.

Oh, and $29 per 96" panel = $116. Not the deal of a lifetime, but not terrible, either—and Danny'll keep me around a while longer, I think. (He just concurred.)

2 comments:

The Books said...

I think they look great and match up fairly well! :)

Erica said...

How annoying! They look good, though! I'm jumping on the chevron curtain wagon, too. I ordered fabric over a week ago for our room and I can't wait for it to arrive!