Roman Shade Redo...

I love Roman shades. I hate the ones that came with my house. Here are the awesome ones that have been hanging out in my basement for the last 40+ years...

Fabulous, right?? Well, they have been ok to keep up for the last 9 months that we have been here, but I was starting to get REALLY tired of them. Plus 2 of the 4 were broken, so that gave me a totally legit reason to take them down. But I started thinking about having one over my kitchen window would be helpful. It's an East facing window and in the mornings, we have to keep ducking around the kitchen to avoid the blinding light while getting the girls their breakfast and making lunches. Not cool. I really didn't want to make a Roman shade, because, well...I'm lazy. So the wheels started turning in my head and I figured out how to reuse my old, super ugly Roman shades.

First I replaced the cord. The fraying cord was the reason that 2 of the shades were thrown out. So I picked up a package of curtain cord at JoAnn's. I cut the old cord in several places and kept it in the rings and locking mechanism so I could figure out where to thread the new cord through.

It took a while, but I finally got the new cord in and the old cord out. And it worked!! YAY! Next,I laid out my fabric. I used the same Amy Butler Lotus print I used to make my dining room curtains out of. One day, we are going to knock out the wall between the kitchen and dining room, so I thought I might as well make a matching window covering. I laid the shade on top of the fabric, taking great care to center the print as best as I could and GRABBED MY GLUE GUN. I know. Here is where it gets really technical. I glued the fabric to the shade. Seriously. Crafting 101. I didn't take any pics of that because I was a little busy trying not to burn myself. The process was an awful lot like recovering a chair bottom, though. When I got completely done with the gluing, I tacked the fabric in 8 different spots. While I think the glue will do a pretty good job of holding the fabric on, I think stitching it on will help it hold the fabric in place in the middle, despite all the raising and lowering of the shade.

After I tacked the fabric down, Adam hung up the brackets over the kitchen window. We replaced the old opaque dome light over the sink this weekend with a more modern pendant. It took some adjusting, but we finally got the brackets in the right spot. And here is the finished product...

I LOVE it! And I can't wait to get my walls painted. Hopefully that will be done by the weekend!