METAMORPHOSIS MONDAY: Kitchen Window Valences Add to Room's Ambiance

It's been about a year since we remodeled our kitchen on the dime. 

Dark green wallpaper with pink roses, gorgeous for a bedroom but not a kitchen, came down in gargantuan strips. Soft yellow paint named "Morning Sunshine" went onto the walls and a glossy white covered the ceiling.  A new light replaced an ugly chandelier.  ( An entire post on the remodeling ran on May 20, 2010. If interested, check it out  in the archives.)

Well, for the past year, the kitchen windows have been bare because I couldn't decide whether to put up curtains. For one thing, I didn't know what kind of curtains I wanted, if any. Shades didn't seem appealing to me. So indecision led to living with bare windows.

While it was nice to have as much sunshine as possible come through, the bare windows seemed, well, bare. They gave the kitchen an unfinished look.

On a mission, I started pricing curtains that I liked. Yikes. Some of the price tags made me shiver. There are two big windows above the sink, a small one above a side counter, and a glass, paned top to the kitchen door. All would require some kind of curtain.

Then came a jaunt to beloved Savers, a supermarket sized thrift store that benefits the Big Brothers/Big Sisters organization.  Lo and behold, neatly arranged on hangers, were absolutely exquisite lace panels with little openings along the top for curtain rods.

There was an ecru panel as well as a pure white one. Excitedly, I stretched them out on the floor of the thrift store to see which one I liked best. The ecru panel was much longer but the white had a pretty scalloped lace edging.  Why the panels were made in long strips instead of valences is anyone's guess but I'm glad I found them.

In the end, I put the white panel in my shopping basket and eventually plunked down $4.99 for it, and smiled all the way to my car.

Once home, there was enough lace for all four windows! The curtain rods slipped nicely through the slats along the tops of the panels.

As afternoon sun filters through the lacy valences, it makes patterns on the sunshine colored walls of the kitchen.

My wallet is less than $5.00 poorer and  all four windows have lacy valences!

Sometimes life is great, don't you think?

WHAT IS THE LAST GOOD THING THAT HAPPENED TO YOU?

Today's post has joined Metamorphosis Monday on  Susan's blog, Between Naps on the Porch. Be sure to go there to check out other  home projects. Just click  http://betweennapsontheporch.blogspot.com/