Bathroom Update: Ceiling Mounted Shower Curtain Rod + Turquoise Tweed Pleated Shower Curtain

The lakehouse bath reno is done.  D.O.N.E.  Seriously - done.  Okay, maybe there are one or two tiny details missing, but it's done enough!  After all of our setbacks, do you want to know what held us up the most?  The shower curtain!  Of all things.  In the end, though, all of the shower curtain fussing led to a really cool DIY shower curtain situation that I think is just gorgeous - and it functions beautifully - so it was worth the extra time and effort.

Behold: our floor to ceiling, DIY aqua shower curtain (with separate, washable liner) and our super luxe ceiling mounted shower curtain rod:  



Take a closer look:



It's perfect!  Here's a run down of the hilariously drawn out process - plus why we love our ceiling mounted shower curtain rod and fabric + liner shower curtain combo so much.

Plan #1 - Tension Shower Curtain Rod:

At first the plan was to slap up a tension rod and hang a pretty linen shower curtain.  I wanted to try a fabric curtain + liner because it seemed like just the right amount of fancy for our new bathroom - something different than the polyester Marimekko Tuuli shower curtain we had in the townhouse bathroom (here's a similar birch tree shower curtain). 

The first tension rod we ordered was broken and we tried to fix it, but it still came crashing down one night.  I had ordered it online but for the second attempt, we searched high and low in our city, hoping we could examine it carefully for any defects.  We finally found one, but it didn't have enough of a surface area to grip our textured tile, so it came crashing down even more quickly.  We decided we'd have to get a curtain rod that was affixed more firmly but, having realized how much work it is to drill into tile, neither of us wanted to tackle that - or tempt fate.  More importantly, by this point I realized that I really didn't love the look of a shower curtain rod inside the shower nook because the height made the room seem stumpy.  It was time to think outside the box.

Plan #2 - Ceiling Mounted Shower Curtain Rod:

My Mom brought over one of the brushed nickel West Elm curtain rods from her bedroom and we played with some options:  mounted right above the shower?  Maybe placed a little higher, near the ceiling?  It was the craziest option of all of them - ceiling mounted - that had Hubby, Mom and I oooo'ing and ahhhh'ing.  A ceiling mounted rod made such a statement!  The floor to ceiling height felt grand.  Was it weird, though?  I immediately took to Pinterest and found some inspiration in my Bathroom Design Inspiration board.  This bathroom had a gorgeous ceiling mounted rod and it sealed the deal for me - but this one and this one made me realize it's really not that unusual.  I was sold on the idea!

But we couldn't steal Mom's curtain rod (which West Elm discontinued), so we needed to find a simple, modern rod with small, ceiling mounted brackets and a brushed nickel finish.  That is not an easy thing to track down!   I looked online for weeks to no avail and drove to all of the home reno and curtain shops in town - finally tracking down the perfect rod (since finding one, I did spot a somewhat similar rod online, if you're looking for one).  Mine was a custom order from Budget Blinds (which, at $200 for a curtain rod, wasn't as budget-friendly as I had hoped!).  It took a couple of weeks to arrive, and then we still had to cut the rod to length ourselves and install it.  The whole process took three weeks - you could see a sneak peek of the new curtain rod in my last bathroom update.

It was worth the wait because the rod is excellent quality.  Plus it matches the Kohler fixtures exactly, which is important because brushed nickel finishes can really vary and some of them look very, very cheap.  This, however, is perfect!

Plan #2A - Gathered Shower Curtain:

I had decided against curtain rings, for some bizarre reason, hoping to create a similar curtain ring-less look as my DIY back tab curtains.  I hatched a plan to add a channel to a store-bought shower curtain and my plan went horribly, horribly wrong.  It looked so 80s!  How did it end up so ruffly?   Another week, and lots of thread, wasted.

Plan #2B - Curtain Rings:

Oops!  Live and learn!  Back into town to the curtain shop to order rings, but the owner is the only one who can order things and she was busy so a week went by and I texted every day but she still didn't/couldn't get around to it.  I gave up and was actually at Fabricland, buying curtain rings, when she called to say that the order had been placed.  Curtain rings ultimately added a couple of weeks to my timeline.

I have to admit, they do slide nicely and they look really sharp.  Definitely worth the wait!

Plan #2C - Fancy Metallic Linen Fabric:

In the meantime, I realized my linen shower curtain, although it was supposed to be long enough, wasn't actually going to reach the floor everywhere.  It hovered in a couple of spots because the hem wasn't even.  So Mom and I headed to Fabricland for fabric ideas but I also ordered some samples of a metallic linen.  Those samples, lost by Canada Post I guess, took three weeks to get here!

Oy with the poodles already.

Plan #2D - Clearance Fabric Score:

The wait was good (bad for the fabric company, good for me) because I came to my senses and decided that it would cost way too much for this shower curtain (now it's $25-30 USD per yard, but when I was first looking is was around $45 and I would have needed six yards!).  I just thought it would look so chic and upscale but, at the end of the day, this is a shower curtain and that fabric isn't even washable!  In hindsight, the dark grey might have really made the bathroom feel dark and dreary anyway - even though it was shot with shimmering metallic threads.  At Fabricland I found a clearance fabric that was double the regular width (it's meant for draperies).  I bought all of the yardage I needed for around $30.  Score!  The light grey and pale aqua brighten up the room which, although blindingly sunny in the summer, is quite a bit darker in the summer thanks to heavy tree coverage behind our house (you can see the trees on this side of our house actually peeking over the roof in my DIY fire pit post).  The best part about this fabric choice: I tossed it in the washer and dryer with no problems.

It turned out to be the perfect fabric!  It's the exact color as the sinks, just a lot lighter (in the photos it reads a bit differently).  It ties together all of the aqua and grey accents and is similar to the tweeds in the bedroom and office - so I love that consistency.  Plus, this room is all about natural textures - no patterns or prints - so this fabric pairs beautifully with the other design elements. 

After my fabric finding victory, my Mom and I still need to sew the darn thing!  We decided to add a soft, very minimal pleat so the curtain would drape evenly when closed.  We used drapery hooks to easily affix the curtain to the rings, but they remove in snap for laundering.  My biggest concern was that I wanted the shower curtain to wrap around and cover the shower opening at the edges, so you can't see a sliver of it walking by the bathroom.  Success:

But here's where the real genius is:

I wanted a separate curtain liner so I ordered the Hotel Fabric Shower Curtain Liner from Bed Bath & Beyond.  It's excellent quality, with grommets and bonus little suction cups on either side to hold it in place (so clever).  I wanted it hidden, though, so we sewed the shower curtain with two more rings than the shower curtain has, so it starts one ring in on both ends, ensuring that it stays hidden when the shower curtain is closed.  To affix it to the shower curtain, I used ball chain ordered from Amazon.  I ordered 25 feet with connectors and just cut my own chain curtain rings.  The ball chain links hold the shower liner to the curtain, but are easily removed for laundering the liner.

It took me a week to order the ball chain and another two weeks to finally cut it to length and get up on a step ladder to add the liner.  By this point, I had grown a little weary of the whole shower curtain business because, frankly, I prefer a soothing bath these days anyway.

BUT it turned out so beautifully, and it's so, so practical, so it was worth the fussing and fiddling and re-working our plans.  Whew - hard to believe this shower curtain took longer to choose than anything else in the bathroom!  I'm sharing the full reveal later this week so stay tuned. 

Now tell me: what's the weirdest home decor/renovation delay you've experienced?

DIY Tweed Back Tab Curtains for the Bedroom

After listening to me ramble on about tweed, let me just show you the new bedroom curtains!
(Spoiler alert: they're tweed!):

With my new wide angle lens, you can see our glass sliding closet doors and the new green curtains!  Learning to handle my DSLR and wide angle lens is still a slow process, but I love that I can show you so much more of a room in one photo!  (Ignore the blank canvases - a DIY art project I'm currently working on).  

I was quite smitten with the last set of DIY back tab curtains my Mom and I made but, after I switched around the vintage Hungarian posters, the teal pattern no longer worked in the room. 

This green tweed is utterly perfect - the exact shade of green I wanted, shot with aqua.  When we moved to the lakehouse, I was on a mission to add more colour but I've realized that colour + pattern aren't necessarily what I want.  I think that colour + texture or a low contrast pattern (and smaller doses of pattern), look best in the space.  Then our beautiful artwork can take centre stage.

The fabric I chose is called Dapp Peacock and I purchased it from U-Fab, before they dropped their e-commerce site (you can still order by phone/email).

I'm so impressed by the sheen and weight of this fabric; it has a luxurious feel.  The tweed relaxed a bit after we hung them up so they break a bit more than planned.  We might re-hem them, but I'm waiting to see if the fabric relaxes more. 

Head over to Hello Yellow for the how-to, including some tips for working with this tweed - which was a bit trickier than the outdoor fabric we used for the last set of drapes.

I still have a bolt of the same tweed in aqua, calling my name from where it's propped up in the corner of my office.  I hope my Mom and I can carve out some time soon(ishly) to whip up some turquoise tweed curtains for the office, which will create a really nice cohesiveness and flow between the two bedrooms.

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New Blue Tweed Dining Room Chairs Update the Dining Room

You know how when you lose something, you inevitably find it when you stop looking?  I'm starting the think that the same thing happens when you're questing for "the perfect thing".  I yammered on for years about wanting to replace our brown vinyl dining room chairs and as soon as I stopped looking, I found a set I liked!  I actually stumbled across them at HomeSense, and hauled them home from Toronto (I love having a truck).

Although they were but humble chairs from Jysk, our brown chairs were seriously comfy, so every chair I contemplated paled in comparison.  I'd recently decided to just spring for new upholstery, but the cost of that seemed daunting - as did attempting to tackle the job ourselves.  And, if I'm being honest, I was leery about spending hundreds to reupholster cheap, made in China chairs - even if they were comfy, and we hadn't had a single problem with them in nearly a decade of use.  (We picked them up for $69.97 each, 50% off their original sticker price because they were discontinued and on clearance).

After eight years of looking at brown vinyl, I'm so excited to see these beauties every morning!

What a difference!

The new chairs are supremely comfortable and the blue tweed upholstery is gorgeous.  It's eerily similar to the fabric I had chosen for re-upholstery - and a perfect match to my stolen Lotte lamps.  Actually, this shade of blue pops up in the living room artwork, the dining room painting - even in the kitchen, courtesy of one of the little enamel pieces above the stove and my cathrineholm bowl. 

They're solidly built and made in the USA, which I love.  They have a slightly curvier, more interesting shape which is nice, plus the silver upholstery tacks are a fun touch!  I like that they look modern because although I love mid-century, I don't want my house to look like a time capsule.  I would have preferred walnut(ish) legs instead of espresso, but I could easily paint or re-stain them later.  I recently added furniture with a really dark stain somewhere else in the house, so the finish doesn't look too out of place here.  They were $149 a chair, which isn't bad for something manufactured in North America.  I'm always willing to pay a bit more for stuff that isn't made in China!

I just love the blue with the teak! 

The first day that I made the switch, I couldn't get over how much brighter and airier the dining room felt.  I hadn't realized that the darker chairs made the room feel heavy and really grabbed my attention.  Now my eyes travel over the dining room table to the lake view beyond.  Next to go is the dark brown ottoman in the living room.  It's falling apart, so we plan to build a custom one - with storage - this fall, and we'll probably still stick with the blue tweed I was ogling.

For anyone who is on a similar hunt for comfy dining chairs, these are made by Sole Designs.  I scooped mine up at HomeSense (like HomeGoods, for my American friends).  But the company sells their chairs on Amazon too, and I found the same shape in an insanely adorable orange and aqua, Mondrian-inspired print.  They make a mid-century inspired ottoman with the same pattern and I want it.  Sole Designs also sells this style chair in a sweet pink Greek key pattern and busier blue and pale purple fabric.  I'll keep you posted on how these wear.  I already gave them two coats of ScotchGuard (which I've never, ever used) in the hopes of protecting the upholstery from stains.  I've grown very accustomed to wipe-able, dirt hiding brown vinyl! 

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A Great Source for Colourful, Mid-Century Inspired Tweed Fabric

If you follow me on Instagram, or caught the recent post about my new poster purchase, then you might already know that I'm swapping the teal DIY back tab bedroom curtains...

...for an absolutely perfect green tweed! 

From Instagram

I know that some of you are Team Teal, but the tweed has won some hearts too.  Before I show off the new drapes (they're gorgeous, but a little too long - oops!), I wanted to explain my reasoning - and how I suddenly became totally obsessed with tweed.

Finding the teal patterned fabric in the bedroom was so tricky!  I was committed to more colourful textiles in the lakehouse, and I really pushed myself out of my comfort zone of sheers, sheers, and more sheers.  It helped that Hubs wanted "real curtains" that would block light and offer privacy.  I searched for a long time, but couldn't find a shade of green/teal that worked with the posters.  Eventually I found a teal print that had a modern feel and looked nice with the posters, although it complemented the middle poster best.  I thought (and still think) these curtains were gorgeous.  Trying something different (for me) really paid off! 

When I moved the middle poster out of the room, all of a sudden my beloved curtains looked wrong.  I casually started the search anew and was looking for curtain fabric for the office at the same time.  I had a contender in mind for the office, but I really wanted the curtains in both rooms to have a similarly scaled pattern for some continuity.  I corralled all of the viable options in a Pinterest board to show my Mom and she ended up finding this photo I had pinned a long time ago, from the show house Young House Love did:

 
I was really smitten with those luxurious aqua tweed drapes, but because they didn't suit the bedroom I didn't think twice about them.  Huddled over my Mom's tiny tablet, we clicked over to U-Fab.  I was positively giddy when I found not only a bevy of gorgeous tweeds (Hubs would like me to say a "gaggle of gorgeous tweeds), but also what looked like the perfect shade of green for the bedroom - shot with teal, like it was made for me!  I immediately ordered a bunch of samples, trying not to swoon at my $15 bill (one reason I've stuck to buying fabric locally for so long).  The folks at U-Fab were so sweet, and generously sent over some freebie samples, which was a lot of fun.  What is it about getting something free that makes people so happy? 

I taped some of the contenders up on the wall and spent a few days and nights contemplating - I like to see fabric or paint swatches under different lighting.  This was my original short list for the bedroom (clockwise from the top, Dapp Cloud, Dapp Peacock, and Dapp Elephant):



"Elephant" was too dark, but the silvery, creamy "Cloud" looked SO good, especially with the bed skirt and the off-white background of the posters.  It definitely harkened back to the townhouse, where creamy sheers and mushroom-hued silk curtains were de rigeur.  In the end, the green "Peacock" was too perfect to ignore.  In the office, there were no other contenders because the Dapp Aqua (which YHL used) looked amazing.

The office is still unfinished, but I'm letting the art work guide my choices.  The turquoise looks perfect with the art in there (by Bert Weir):

From Instagram

I'm going to be honest and say that it really frosts my cake that it took me two tries to get the curtains in the bedroom "right," because the fabric for the first set, even thought it was on sale, cost about $100 at Fabricland.  Spending money on something twice is such a disappointment and something I try really hard to avoid, but I couldn't have predicted my poster splurge.  I'm really excited about the new curtains and I love that the office and bedroom will have coordinating drapes.  I think that's going to look really chic and polished, and I'm realizing that texture, as opposed to bold pattern, might be a better fit for me in the long run.  I think tweed will have more longevity too.

After the green and aqua tweeds were ordered, I tossed the samples on the dining room table.  And that's when it hit me: these tweeds are upholstery weight!  Hmmmm... would any of them be suitable for recovering our super comfy dining room chairs?  I have kept my eyes peeled for comfortable, more stylish replacements for years, but no chair can hold a candle to these - they are lounge chair comfy, and they encourage us to sit and relax and linger.  I've even dragged my laptop out to the dining room and spent whole days working there, drinking in the view, instead of clacking away in the office which, although it has a lovely mountain view, pales in comparison.  I don't think our butts will ever allow us to part with the chairs, so recovering them might be the way to go.  The "Peacock" actually looks pretty good with the living room, but I think it would be a bit much beside the aqua kitchen - it's a pretty saturated green.  I think that with such bold statements in the living room and kitchen, the dining room chairs don't need to yell quite so loudly - although they do need to be a little peppier than their current brown, because they do seem out of place. 

A creamy beige, shot with pale aqua (Dapp Crystal), caught my eye.  It really picked up the creaminess of the leather sofa and the white stained maple counters, but I think cream dining room chairs might be giving us too much credit.  It would be a disaster on spaghetti night.

 

After a bit more sample shuffling, I found "The Magic Tweed" as we call it (Dapp Blue Jay) - a blue-ish, grey-ish, slightly teal-ish tweed that, at first glance, doesn't seem bright or bold enough to strike my fancy.  It's a chameleon, though, blending in and looking more teal, grey, or blue as required.

It is especially adept at picking up the teal of the velvet chair.  We'd like to build a new living room ottoman, something a bit narrower and longer, with hidden storage, and this teal could work for that too.  Carrying the same fabric from the dining chairs to the ottoman would be lovely - it would connect the two spaces.

I'm going to get some quotes from some local upholsterers to see how feasible it is, and how much I'd need to save up.  In the meantime, now you know how I came to decide that everything must be tweed ;)

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