Windows, Windows, Windows

When we first saw the house, I loved the window treatments in the living room.  They went with the P.O.'s antiques.  (There's our Hunter again...wow, does time fly!)  There are four windows in this living room...not all the same size and not evenly placed or centered.  An issue not to be discussed in today's blogging! The P.O. left the valances and shades for me - the shades lasted a few months.  

Shades and I don't get along.  I can't seem to operate them with any degree of consistency - resulting in a lot of four letter words late at night and early in the morning.  So, rather quickly, the shades were replaced by wood blinds.  

Shortly after that, the P.O. realized those curtains didn't work in her new home so brought them back to me. They didn't work with the furniture I had at that point, so into the linen closet they went until I could fit them in.

In 2006, we tackled the room after having electrical and structural issues worked out.  And in 2007, we got new furniture that suited the age of the house more than our original over-stuffed couches did and I was able to finally use the curtains. 

When the Christmas Decorations came down this year, so did the curtains.  The valances were put away a few years ago.  (That's our Hunter with that cup of coffee on Christmas morning. Wow, does time fly!)

I had recently realized how dark the living room was what with the curtains covering part of the windows (spending four days on a couch will open your eyes to a lot of things!) and decided that it was time to hang those curtains differently.  The new plan was to hang them off to the side of the windows to avoid blocking light during the day but still allowing me to draw them at night for privacy.  I'm ready to get rid of those blinds; living in a farmhouse surrounded by fields means lots and lots of cleaning blinds.  I needed some pretty rods, so after painting the room, David and bought those pretty rods as my birthday gift.  

And we put them up; and we hung those curtains.  And we promptly took them back down.   Four windows of color promptly took over the room; all you saw was those curtains...no furniture, no trim work, nada.  Just - those - curtains!  So down they came.

I ran upstairs and grabbed the Sheers from the Guest Room and hung them up in one window to verify what I thought I needed to do.  Yep, I needed to go with a curtain that is going to disappear into the walls.

This photo is with the blinds pulled up allowing light to spill into the room and nothing in the way of the view...lovely, but.... it looks awfully nice with the blinds down too.  So, now I have to decide if I really, really want to get rid of those blinds....how much does the work of keeping them clean really bother me?  I'll let you know in a future post; I think it will depend upon whether I end up with some sheers or with actual curtains.

David swears I knew all along that changing the room color was going to mean new window treatments...but honestly, if I hung those curtains the old way, I think they'd still work but I'd be giving up the light that hanging them off the windows allows into the room.  

Good thing he wants more light in the room as well... So it's off to choose curtains; in the meantime, this is the state of our living room windows...