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I like to refer
the Guest Room of our home as the East Room. It is not only
located on the east side of our home, but a number of tributes to
Lynn's family are in this room and her maiden name is East.
There is one tall
window in this room. We installed custom blinds when we first
moved into the home and they have served quite nicely, but we have
been of the mind to install more elaborate window treatments in a
number of the rooms including this one.
Click
HERE for
photographs of how we updated the East Room. |
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It took a long while, but we finally found a fabric pattern that we
felt would be perfect for the Guest Room at an Orlando
JoAnn Fabrics
store. It shared the colors of the bed spread, the wallpaper
border and reflected the early 1900's atmosphere. We picked up
a few yards of the fabric for the curtains and a cornice we planned
to build ourselves. We also picked up a few yards of backing.
We wanted the curtains to be pleated, so we took the fabric to a
seamstress recommended by
Calico
Corners when we purchased fabric there for the Sitting Room. |
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In mid August we picked up a precut piece of 1/4-inch plywood from
either Lowe's or
Home Depot.
It was 1/4 size of a full sheet, so it was easy to fit in the car
and it was already 48-inches wide to match the width of the cornice.
We also picked up an 8-foot 1x4 plank of pine to use for the sides
and top of the cornice. In retrospect, we would have purchased
a 1x6 plank of pine, but the size we selected worked out well.
As a note for those who do not purchase wood on a regular basis, the
lumber industry has an odd tradition of referring to sizes that are
not accurate. For instance a 1x4 usually actually measures
3/4-inch-by-x3 1/2-inches. Keep this in mind when purchasing
lumber to satisfied measured projects. |
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At some point of indecision we purchased a soft cornice from either
Bed Bath &
Beyond or Linens
and Things. Our hope was to find matching curtains at a
longer length, but the chain of stores was unable to provide it for
us. We very much liked the shape of the cornice. We
ultimately decided to return the cornice since we could not use it,
but we first traced the shape of the design to a large sheet of
brown wrapping paper.
When we finally decided to make a cornice, we used the tracing to
draw the design on the plywood. As a tip, when using a design,
fold it in half and mirror the best looking side. This helps
ensure that both halves are symmetrical. |
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Once the pattern was cut, we cut the 1/4 pine for sides. We
used Liquid
Nails as our choice of wood glue and predrilled for screws about
6 to 8 inches apart.
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Once the sides were
attached, the top of the cornice was measured, cut and attached. At
some point I wondered why we needed to bother with a top to the cornice,
but I later realized that it helps keep the curtains cleaner, the cornice
stronger and easier to install.
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When we purchased batting for the cornice , we acquired the
remaining yards on a short roll. We felt that we had enough
and we did, but we had to use cut pieces to fill in on one side.
Although we made it work out, we found that fabric pulls around the
batting differently at any point that batting might be butted
together. In the future, we would make sure we always used one
solid piece of batting and not piece it together to fill a surface. |
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Never having made a cornice before, it took us a short while to
determine that the batting should only be positioned on the front
and sides. It should not be wrapped around or attached to any
other surface. A staple gun was used to attach the batting
around the edges of the three surfaces. |
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Some fabrics can
be "railroaded" across a cornice, essentially enabling one strip of
fabric to cover the entire cornice. But when the fabric has a
pattern that has a visual "up" and "down" in its design, panels have
to be sewn side-by-side until the width is wide enough to cover the
face of the cornice and wrap around and cover the sides as well.
This was a step we needed to take for our cornice. To make
sure we could center the fabric across the front, we had to sew
panels on both sides. This can be a challenge while trying to
match the pattern. |
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The seamstress that made our curtains out of the fabric we supplied
gave us a great tip on how to first sew fabric upside down and
backwards onto the rope trim (as shown at right), staple the two
together to the edge of the cornice, then fold the fabric back over
the edge to hide the staples. |
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It
takes some thought to sew a strip of fabric to the rope correctly
because it is counter-intuitive, but it wasn't all that difficult
once we ironed out the process in our minds. The difficulty
was certainly worth all of the effort once we saw how nice it
looked. |
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The trim is
attached to the top and bottom of the cornice and around the sides
as shown at left. We figured out that it was important to ford
the ends in to the back of the sides. The rope cannot be
attached to the back of the cornice in a way that would hinder it
from being mounted flat to the wall. When tucked properly, the
fabric gets wrapped tightly around it so that the rope ends are not
at all visible. |
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By this time, we felt that we had the hardest parts of the cornice
behind us. To finish it off, backing was added to the remaining
uncovered portions of the back of the cornice. Technically, since
the back of the cornice is not openly exposed once it has been fully
installed, adding backing may seem like an unnecessary step, but finishing
the cornice properly was something we felt we wanted to do. |
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After the backing
is stapled in place. A 1/2-inch narrow white trim is glued over the
edges to hide the edges and staples. |
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We had two brackets in a box of miscellaneous hardware items.
We screwed them to the top of the top side of the cornice and held
the cornice in place to determine where the brackets needed to be
attached to the wall. With the aid of a level, we used a short
pencil to mark the holes for the brackets.
Once the holes were marked, we removed the brackets from the cornice
and anchored the to the wall. With the brackets on the wall,
it was easy to ret the cornice back on to them and use a screwdriver
to screw the brackets back into the underside of the cornice from
underneath.
At right is the end result. |
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