Stairway to Heaven

Ok, ok, the post title is exaggerating a bit. I don't think any part of our home could be described as heavenly. Especially not in this heat. But at least the reference to a stairway is accurate.

A couple of months ago, I spotted a coupon for a free quart of paint at Ace Hardware. You had to go on a certain date (it was a Saturday), and the flyer stressed that quantities were limited. A quart of paint isn't a lot, but Keith and I had been talking about painting the stairwell to our basement and figured a free can of paint would be just the thing to jump start our project. When Saturday morning rolled around, I hustled Keith out of bed and dressed and fed Bert and made sure we were out the door so that we could get to Ace shortly after they opened at 8:00. I was getting my free can of paint, darn it.

When we arrived, there were a number of people already nabbing cans and choosing colors. We didn't have a problem getting one though because there had to have been about 400 quarts of free paint. Keith rolled his eyes at me and asked why he had to be woken up so early. It didn't get any better when they ran the same add in their flyers every week for the next month. If we had another room we were ready to paint, I would have gone back for a quart every week and done a whole room.

At any rate, we had our free paint. I wish I could say we came home and got right to it, but we actually didn't get anything done until Memorial Day weekend. The free paint was actually a paint and primer in one, but our stairwell was really grungy, so after we  washed it down and taped it off, we used up some primer we had left over from painting Bert's room to do two coats, then we squeezed two coats out of our quart of paint.

I swear we took turns painting, but Keith doesn't take pictures of me working. I think it is on purpose, to give all of you the impression that he is the only one who gets anything done.

On to the grand reveal! 

So it isn't super exciting, but it looks clean. Ahhhhh... We thought the paint color we had picked was a little more on the yellow, creamy side, but it pretty much looks white. Oh well. We are ok with that.

What we needed next was a curtain to hide all our junk on that shelf. It's where we throw our farmers' market baskets, cooler, and other random things so it's better if we don't have to see it. And if you are wondering why we don't just close the basement door and not look at any of this, it is because the cat's litter box is in the basement so she needs to be able to go up and down freely.

The curtain was the big hold up on getting this post done. Which I guess means it was my fault, because I am the sole employee of the sewing department. Keith's only input was that I should pick a fabric he would like (duh) and no ruffles. So when my mom and I went to the fabric store, I finally made a decision on fabric, and bought a yard and a half. A yard would have easily done it, but I forgot to measure the space beforehand and wasn't taking any chances. When I did measure the opening, I had a space of 30" x 27" that I needed to cover. I very scientifically decided to cut a 34" square, figuring I would use up an inch on each side for the hem (leaving a 32" square) and then I needed to make a casing for the curtain rod.

I measured and cut 34" in one direction, and then just folded my left edge to my bottom edge like a triangle, and cut off the excess so that when I opened it, I had my 34" square.

Then I used my hem gauge, measure half an inch and ironed, folded it over again and ironed it, and pinned it in place to give me a nice finished edge. I did this on opposite sides, sewed them, and then did it to the remaining sides, giving me what appeared to be a giant hankie.

Then I (very scientifically) held it over my curtain rod and played with it until I figured out where I needed to fold it to make the casing and have the right length, which ended up being about 5". I folded that over and ironed it, and then sewed one last seam.

Then I hung it up and I was done.

It feels good to finally have that project finished (to the tune of about $15 since only had to buy fabric and a curtain rod), and even better to have the grimiest spot in our house that we look at all the time looking cleaner and brighter. Just don't go all the way down to the basement.