Imperfectly Perfect

About 10 years ago, we blew the roof off our house and instead of a Cape Cod, we made a traditional 2-story home. My main goal was to get all of our bedrooms on the second floor (instead of baby down and us up) because, you know, I wanted to protect our baby (and those to come) from babynappers. True story.

In the process, we lost our gigantic bedroom (a small price to pay to ward off the babynappers). I'm okay with our new bedroom, but decorating-wise, it's been a pain. Especially the wall where the bed sits. One window ruins the whole idea of a headboard, and pictures just look weird.

I did buy an old barn door to try hanging over the bed, but on the way home from the antique store, my husband had to put the door in the trunk because he was clearly allergic to whatever animal used to go in and out of that door. Since I really like my husband, I decided to air out the door and put it in the living room instead.

I painted our room around this time last year (Tobacco Road, thank you Nester -- hop on her Nesting Place button over there and visit her). But the bed-wall...it remained my nemesis.

Enter, our hero...the Dropcloth.


The other day. I was reading a blog by an incredibly talented decorator and shop owner (http://www.euroantiquemarket.blogspot.com/) and she mentioned she uses drop-cloths for everything. Hmmmm. Hmmmmmm. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

The wheels started turning. Canvas or linen was kind of the look I was thinking of for a possible solution to my bed-wall-window problem.

So yesterday I went to Lowe's (Big Lots was out) and bought 2 big dropclothes ($11 each).

My husband hung the curtain rod for me (a Levelor, 108" rod for $12), and then, remembering Nester's wise words..."it doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful," I grabbed my straight pins and began playing with my dropcloths. I pinned. I ripped (!). I foofed. I fiddled. Never even thought about getting my sewing machine out from hiding.

I think it turned out pretty well. This morning my husband and I were going to have coffee before church on our "new deck" just off the bedroom (duh, right behind those curtains), but it was snowing. Bummer.

Dropcloths, straightpins, a curtain rod and a few hours = imperfectly perfect. And the icing on the cake? We get to pretend there's all sorts of interesting things on the other side of those curtains (instead of our neighbor's driveway).