When In Rome...

do as the Romans do.  But since I'm not anywhere close to Rome, I'll just hang a (fake) roman shade and call it good.

Have you ever been bothered by something so much that you absolutely had to do something about it real quick like?  That's what happened to me with those cafe curtains I hung in the storage room (see the reveal here...I almost called this post the re-reveal but thought that might be a bit too far).  The curtain fabric was cute (and free!) and it paired nicely with the wall color...but that's it.  They were just wrong in here; not my favorite; best placed somewhere else.

In all reality, they didn't look too too bad but I had couldn't let go of the roman shade look and once you see those up, I think you'll agree that the cafe curtains had to go. 

 

I've had this video on how to make a faux roman shade saved for ages and finally got my chance to try it in the past few weeks.  I followed Scott's tutorial almost to a 'T' but wanted my shades to be able to cover the entire window so my measurements were different and then, in the end, I tied my rings together with twine verses connecting them with plastic rings.  

The lighting is a little different (sunny day above verses the cloudy day in the shot below) but I think the faux roman shade tops things off in here much better.

(I also painted the 2 x 4s underneath the cabinets to match the floors so that's another thing, besides the lighting, that looks a little different.)

It took me weeks to find a fabric I liked but in the end I settled on this one from Fabric Guru (my most shopped online fabric store) and I like that it has the same green as that on the walls in the pattern along with a medium aqua color (the aqua is a little more saturated in person).

The other side of the room still looks like it did before - lots of storage stuff...

but capped off a little nicer, especially with the new addition of a big 'ole bucket of joint compound.  ;)

This side of the room gets loads of afternoon sunshine which is great in the winter, but really heats up the space in the summer hence the reason why I wanted these shades to be just as long as the windows they cover.  This side will be down during the summer to keep things cool.  I could just add some string and make these guys actual roman shades in the future but it was fun to tackle the faux roman shade thing at this point.  I'm all for them.  The windows in our breakfast nook have blinds on them but I'd really like to make some faux shades to fit over the blinds so it was great to get the experience under my belt and be able to tweak some of the process for next time.

There are still things to do in this room but they're low on the priority list.  Right now we're chugging away in the kids bathroom.  I'm off to find counters next week and the double sinks are in an online cart.  Little by little...

So tell me honestly, do you think the roman shade look is better than the cafe curtain look in here or are you team cafe curtain?  I think cafe curtains are cute, really cute.  But maybe they're only cute above kitchen sinks and maybe in cute little bathrooms or laundry rooms.  Not this room.  They're also very functional - they allow for privacy, covering the lower part of windows while allowing sunshine to stream in the upper part.  But still, not in this room.

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Have a great weekend!