Pole to Pole

Wanting to have as relaxing a New Year as possible, we elected to venture out today for both groceries (a short, sharp shop) and to see if we could finally find some curtain poles for the study. The first and only place on our list for these was Housing Units in Failsworth and we were lucky to find a reasonable selection of both poles and finials.

Naturally, the pole you want doesn't quite have the finial you want, and the finial you really like isn't available with the pole you decide looks nicest, but that's just life plain and simple. Too much choice and not enough combinations of that choice is a recipe for stress, and a lengthy discussion, deliberation and decision process, which we duly went through.

The situation is complicated by the larger of the two windows being a double sash. It has a casement between the two sashes which is not at the same level as the wall. It's further out. Hence any centre bracket has to be longer than the wall brackets on either side (and the window is, according to received wisdom, too wide to take a single pole without a centre support). A final further complication is that the window frame is set very high in the wall, so there is no gap between the top of the frame and the cornice. Hence the pole can't be mounted above the window as would normally be the case.

After much debate I agreed that the only way around it would be to make a small supporting block for the centre bracket, and screw this to the window frame. This was, in fact, the way it had been done prior to the strip out, but as usual not very accurately, so the pole had quite a bend in the middle. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to make a better job of it this time round.

Before we set out today Nikki had found a few places online who would custom-make the poles and brackets, and if we'd decided to go with them we could have had the centre bracket as big as we liked, but as always everything comes at a cost, both financial and in further delay to the project. So we placed the order, benefitting from a 10% sale discount, and returned home feeling well satisfied with our short sojourn.