Firstly, I mentioned some time ago that my brother-in-law had grabbed an enormous amount of fully-lined curtains that were being thrown in the skip-bin from an office renovation job he was working on in Sydney. The curtains are made from an excellent quality linen and are very, very heavy including all the lining, they even include all the hanging hooks! It's an absolute disgrace that they were going in the bin, but then it's very lucky for me, because I managed to score one of them for nothing ;-)
With winter coming on here Down Under, it's getting colder by the day. Previously we have had to rely on our reverse-cycle air conditioner for heating the house in winter, which is not terribly economical! Being a pretty standard project home too, it is open plan, and there is a large area to heat, even if you close off all the bedrooms, bathroom etc. We've been wanting to put doors on the combined dining and lounge rooms, pretty much since we moved in seven years ago (but have never been able to afford it), but this year I hit upon the idea of using the freebie curtain for covering the doorways, instead of doors.
The curtain my sister gave me had a seam about one third of the way along it, so I unpicked it, cut the lining and hemmed it all up again, which have me two curtain from one. Fortuituously, the local curtain store was having a sale last week, so I grabbed a couple of wooden curtain rods to match those in the rest of the house, and DH installed them for me. The smaller curtain was hung over the dining room doorway:
And the larger curtain over the lounge room doorway:
I think they turned out quite nicely! They are so heavy with the lining that they should be excellent insulation, and I deliberately left them a little long to form a good seal along the carpeted floor. As with all curtains though, they should have a pelmet along the top. As warm air rises, it flows along the ceiling and can fall down in the gap between the curtain and the wall and you lose some of your hot air:
At this stage we can't afford pelmets and I figured that having the curtains up was better then nothing, but installing pelmets on all of our curtain rails are definitely on "the list" of things to do to make our heating more efficient. This winter though, we can rely on a small Dimplex electric oil column-heater to just heat the lounge-dining rooms, so we should save a fair bit on electricity, especially as we will have it on just enough to take the chill off the air, not make it toasty warm, LOL. We've given it a go already, and it worked quite well :-) Yay.
In other areas, we were also fortunate to find a wind-up LED lantern on sale, which was great, as I've had this on a list of things to buy as money permits, for a while now. We have two wind-up LED torches, but now we also have a lantern that we can sit on a table to light up a room if needs be. No batteries or electricity required :-)
We've also been searching for a local supply of large food-grade drums (like pickle drums) to no avail for some time (they get snatched up immediately!), so when we found another 200 litre Rainmate water tank on sale for half-price, we grabbed it. It's a flat-pack tank, which comes in a cardboard box that fits in the boot of our car - super easy to get around! We already have one installed around the back of the house, and yes, it does tend to leak a little when full. Still, it's better than nothing and will do until we can find a more permanent, larger, solution to our water storage issues. So we now have two 200 litre tanks, and the 2500 litre slimline tank for a total of 2900 litres (766 gallons) of rainwater storage.
DH got it all put together, along with a diverter on the downpipe yesterday. It's under our pergola and I will be using it for watering my pot plants and filling the dog water bowl (which is that bowl sitting under the tap in the photo).
Now it just needs to rain again to fill it - but having had 266.5mm of rain here over the past fortnight, I think it can happily stay empty for another couple of weeks, LOL.
10 comments:
Great job on the curtains - they look great and will make a HUGE difference. You've just reminded me I need to do something about a pelmet in Billy's room.
Wonderful job on the curtains! Wish I could sew like that...or at all LOL!
I love the re-use, recycle, wtg!
Blessings :)
They look great!
I have seen the wind up torches, but a wind up lantern ? Where do you get them from - they are a great idea!
Hi Kez, thanks :-) My in-laws have pelmets (lovely stained timber ones my FIL made when he had all his carpentry gear), and they really do make a difference.
Hi Molly, My sewing skills are *very* limited, all I had to do on these were sew up the seams and hems - all straight lines. My Mum made the curtains in the rest of my house, as it was way past my level of expertise, LOL. I'd think about having ago at some simple ones now though, you'd be surprised at what you can achieve just sewing straight lines!
Hi BW, We found the lantern at Bunnings, in the camping section. I imagine that most camping stores would have similar ones, and a friend mentioned this morning that they got theirs at K-Mart (also in the camping section). Worth a look. Ours doesn't illuminate the room brighly enough to use for task lighting, you'd have to sit right next to it to read for example, but it's certainly enough to cook by etc.
Cheers, Julie
Hi Julie, thanks for the thoughts. Such a sad time for the soldier's family and of course his friends as well.
I have been informing myself more lately on The State of the World and what might happen and how I need to be prepared and your blog continues to remain inspirational (rather than sending me into a panic like other sites!).
Those curtains look lovely, they blend in well with the rest of the rooms we can see in the photo.
They often use those windup lanterns (and also windup radios) in Daru, PNG because the electricity gets cut all the time!
PS: Love the sweet potato!
Your 'new' curtains look fabulous. We have an open plan home as well which is hard to heat and I might try your idea to keep the heat from going up the hallway.
My sweet potato didn't sproat this year but I love them so your picture has me inspired me for next summer.
You've inspired me to think about closing off our large opening between the lounge and the rest of the house. It's fully open plan, so would be fantastic to only have to heat the lounge particularly during the day when the bedrooms don't need it as well. Only problem is that the doorway is about 8ft high (up to the ceiling).
I enjoy reading your blog and the things you are doing. Very encouraging. These curtains look great.
Susan
I love the idea of using curtains like that. We have a few open plan areas too that lose heat.
Your mini water tank looks great too.
Kate
Curtains are a great alternative to doors, they'll certainly keep the heat in and you've done a great job on the sewing!
Post a Comment