The Long and the Shade of It

Miss J was tired of her old kitchen curtains. They were looking a bit tired and the tapes were coming away from the fabric. She wasn't confident enough to put up the new ones and a net curtain that a friend had given her, so GoodGym was called in to help.

Miss J looked to be well prepared. She had replacement curtains which she'd measured the length of and the tape strings were already tied. The net curtain too was ready to hang. 🤞

Miss J had a short step ladder. Even so, a long reach was needed to get to the curtain rail and it was easier to clamber onto the worktop (or sink drainer) and reach up to remove the old curtains. In the meantime, the step ladder was repurposed to change a dusty old pendant light shade at the top of the stairs.

The first curtain was hung... and it was too short to reach across to the middle of the window. It turned out that the tape string had been tied and cut by their previous owner, so Miss J agreed to cut the knot off each string and lose their gather to make them stretch across. They also turned out to be about 15cm too short in height. They had a substantial triple layer hem though, so Miss J plans to lengthen them later.

Next up was the net curtain. This went up easily and turned out to be around 10cm too long 😦. After a bit of a think, Miss J was asked for safety pins and over the next 30 minutes, various ways of shortening the net curtain was tried. Her feedback for each attempt was:

1. Messy and not gathered
2. Gathered and too makeshift
3. Neat and not gathered
4. Just right! 🥳

Miss J was keen to keep her privacy, so once the the net curtain was just right, it needed to be tested out. The GoodGymers stood outside while Miss J turned the lights on and off and neither of them could see into the kitchen. That's pretty good privacy 🔒!