Sometimes we lovers of home decor can come to a roadblock. A speed bump, a…
How to Hang Curtains
With last week’s two posts on the curtain updates in my living room and foyer, I thought I’d give you the behind the scenes tour of how I get those long panels up and into our walls. I’ve done a tutorial before on how I hang up items in plaster walls, take a look here. I use that technique on all of the curtains I hang in the house. I’ve got it down pat. Today I’ll show you my tips and tricks for how I measure to put up brackets and where I put them around the window frames and how to hang curtains.
The windows in our house are quite tall, with 7 foot ceilings, the frames are about 90 inches from the floor. Which means the longer curtains they sell in stores don’t even fit, so I customize them myself. But it gives me plenty of flexibility to hang the rods where I’d like them to get everything to fit just right.
Here is how to hang curtains.
To start, what you can do is actually put the curtains on the rod, climb up onto the ladder and estimate where you need to put the brackets. It’s a bit tricky to balance, so you could always measure. Try to do it and take a picture!
There’s a bracket to the wall in my left hand there too.
I usually mark at the wall where the curtains will just graze the floor. If you want the pooled look and have curtains long it doesn’t matter.
This is probably much easier to do with two people, but hey, I do what I can.
Then I get a little scientific. To set the curtain rod to hang consistently across our three windows, I made a template. I simply trace the curtain bracket that goes into the wall onto a piece of cardboard. Paper would work, but something heavier is better.
Then I poked out the holes where the screws go into your wall.
Since I know where I want my bracket to go into the wall, I measure that distance on the wall and then draw the lines onto the cardboard and cut the cardboard to that length so it sits on my window trim easily. Line up the edge of the frame with the line on the paper if you want them right at the end of the frame.
In my house this distance is usually about 7 inches or so. I usually then mark the distance out from the side of the window trim the same distance and that’s where my bracket goes in the wall. Up and out, that’s where you measure and mark the wall.I know some of the standards say 4 inches, but that just doesn’t cut it here. The top of my window trim alone is 8 inches! In this place more = better.
This pic is in my office where I hung curtains on a bay window. But you can see how high up the brackets are.
Then you just mark your holes and drill away. Don’t forget your painter’s tape dust shelf 🙂
Now here are some pictures of just where I hang the brackets. Sorry for the bad lighting, I still have to master the take a photo of a window thing.
This is the foyer, you can see where I put the brackets in relation to the window frame. This way, with an expanding curtain rod, you can almost have all of the panel on the outside of the window frame, which makes your windows look nice and large.
Here is the top of the panels in the foyer, warning boob light {what to replace it with suggestions welcome!}.
To expand the curtains and the look, I simply put some of the clips on the outside of the bracket. See? This is the window in the living room.
And notice I fold the panels where I clip them on, so I can pretty much customize the length too.
This is in the living room also. Here you can see how close the ends of the rods are to my walls. This width is about 150 inches. I was lucky to find a rod that long, thank you Bed, Bath & Beyond.
Here is a terrible {and blurry} photo of the brackets in the wall. Now this is not a great example because the screw on the bottom of this one just did not get totally into the wall, the bracket is supposed to be flush, but it’s in 113 year old wood, believe me, it’s secure.
And that is pretty much how I get my curtains up! Thanks to all of you who voted in my very official Facebook poll on whether to use ring clips or put the curtains on the rod in the pocket. Ring clips won!
First, great tutorial. I’ll be off to check out your tips for hanging curtains in plaster walls. Plaster walls, how I love you and curse you. Second, your stained glass window is dreamy. How beautiful. And, third and finally, Your white chair, I have that same chair, though, when I bought mine, it was in sad shape. I found mine at Goodwill for $3.99 and gave it a good makeover. If you’re interested in taking a peek: http://whilewearingheels.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-big-reveal-goodwill-chair.html
Hi Jessica,
I was perusing the interwebs in an attempt to find the best way to hang a curtain rod into plaster walls when I found this. Thanks for the info, but I was curious…in the bottom picture you have a white chair that looks reupholstered and I have two chairs that are almost identical to that one. Did you purchase it that way or did you redo it yourself?
Thanks!
Hi Courtnay,
Glad this post will help you.I also did a post on how to hang items in plaster walls here: http://decoradventures.com/2012/03/how-to-hang-items-on-plaster-walls.html
That method is what I use to hang pretty much everything. And yes, I did makeover the chair, I wrote about that here: http://decoradventures.com/2011/06/year-long-chair-makeover.html
I spray painted it and reupholstered it also. Thanks for reading!
Oh my gosh I’m like 2 years late to this blog post. It I love your blog so much! I found it because I just sold my home I loved in for 12 years that was newer construction and bought a home that was built in 1920 and all the walls are plaster and I ran across your post about ha gong pictures in plaster walls. Then I saw this post. I’m sure you probably already replaced your light, but I just bought a fixture to replace one of my boob (ha ha!) lights and I got the Charlton Pendant from Birch Lane (Wayfair) -it’s like a glass star. Really cool and comes in different sizes. Wish I could post a picture . 🙂 This may be my new favorite blog! ❤️