Mistreatments

In the words of The Nester...

Mistreatment: (n). covering for a window that is quick, cheap and pretty. may or may not need hardware does not require sewing. a real designer's worst nightmare.

Mistreating: (v). the act of treating a window with dignity and respect without use of the following: hundreds of dollars, sewing, time, crying, divorce, child neglect...

Join the Mistreatment Party today over at Nesting Place!

My kitchen flows through to my family room with a small eating area in between the kitchen and family room. It is a nice area, but not at all spacious, so I want the window treatments in the area to go together--there is one window above the kitchen sink, a sliding door next to the kitchen table, and a huge long window in the family room.

We moved here almost five years ago and I immediately took down the vertical blinds that were on all three windows--I can't stand those things! The windows were naked until June when I started mistreating them. Oh, and I put up wood blinds on the big long family room window...but now I need to save up money to put those on the other windows--those are expensive!

Anyhow, I'm not sure I like my mistreatments. Maybe that's because I really don't like valances (well, except for the cute one in my daughter's room) and these mistreatments essentially are valances. I'd love to do long panels on the sliding door, but that isn't practical seeing as my two year old can reach the door from his highchair. Those would be a hot mess in no time flat.

Another reason I'm not sure I like my mistreatments is my mom's reaction to them. She came in my house and commented on how I did something with my windows. I explained my mistreatments and awaited her opinion--I thought she'd really like the faux roman shade in the family room. Um, no. Her comment was "well, I really like the wood blinds you put up before." And that was that. Ouch.

Soooo...all this blathering is to ask you to be very honest with your opinions! Tell me what you think and give me constructive advice, please! I have to adjust the mistreatments anyhow because they're all at different heights (I was trying to see what height I like best) and that doesn't work for me.

Oh and yes, I've posted some of these pictures before--but I hadn't done the sliding door then.

Here is my kitchen window before (I love strawberries, can you tell?)

And here it is now. This mistreatment is too high (unfortunately!) as compared to my sliding door, so it needs to move down a touch...at least that will hide the alarm sensor on the window a bit more.

Here is a (bad!) picture of my sliding door. See, this totally looks like a wimpy little valance above the door. I'm not liking this at all. Plus it needs to be moved down because you can see the top edge of the door too much.

Here is the family room window--this is a faux roman shade that I did using straight pins and drapery clips. I like this one the best of the three mistreatments, but I'm not sure that hanging it from drapery clips on nails is working for me. Eh, truthfully I'm not sure about anything with these three window treatments!