New Curtains

Inviting guests has been one of my recurrent semiannual initiative failures.  I prepare elegant meals, tell questionable Rabbi jokes for entertainment, and select decent wine.  Yet I  seem to get past the invitation stage due to a serious paucity of friends.  My wife has a larger repertoire of people she knows.  She is more inclined to reach out to them.  Yet when I try to delegate this I am rebuffed by a downstairs that appears less than our means.  True, the cats have left their mark on our living room furniture.  But I have maintained the dining room well.  Living room clutter gets taken care of adequately once a year when the carpet cleaners come in advance of Pesach.  And our bathrooms would need just an ordinary cleaning.  

If the appearance of shabbiness is the barrier to my semiannual initiative that always fails, then the best option would be to do an appearance upgrade.  And the easiest way to do that would involve new window treatments as the focus of living room and dining room.

I have replaced the curtains in both rooms myself many years ago.  Hanging drapes with a valance for the living room, powder blue chiffon tiebacks for the dining room.  The dining room has faded badly.  It is easily replaced by a similar model, or perhaps it can be washed and rehung.  It was neither expensive to purchase nor difficult to install.  When new, it added sparkle to that room.  

Our living room curtains may offer more of a new starting point.  I never liked the valance.  The tiebacks were mostly dysfunctional.  Moreover, the rod, which can be part of the focus, was largely hidden by massive drapes.  The windows have white gauze panels which I like, and probably make any need for tiebacks counterproductive.  I think a new pair of rods of interest in their own right and curtains hanging from the rods to just above the floor would be the way to go.

The vastness of internet resources allows instruction in measurement and how-to's of installation.  Within my skill level, though not part of the shop curriculum in Junior High.  Probably not part of the girls' Home Ec curriculum either.

The drapes themselves come in endless styles, easily accessible through online retailers from the get anything Amazon to the more particular Etsy.  Or I can go to Boscov's to look at rods and hanging methods and perhaps even come across just the right ones.  It's a very doable project that escapes me from another project rut.