Bamboo garden poles make beautiful, inexpensive curtain rods.
Beautiful curtain rods add the finishing designer touch to your living space but can also set you back a pretty penny. With some creativity, you can make your own attractive curtain rods from inexpensive, commonly available supplies. Hardware and home supply stores are sources for the raw materials to make curtain rods to match any style decor.
Bamboo
Designer bamboo accessories are expensive from high-end decorating stores, but gardeners know that bamboo is really a cheap, sturdy material useful for everything from tomato stakes to rose trellises and fencing. Garden supply stores carry bamboo poles in a wide array of lengths and diameters. Select a size sturdy enough to support the weight of your draperies without drooping --narrow bamboo poles are flexible, while larger-diameter poles are rigid. Mount it to the wall with simple wooden or metal hooks from the hardware store. Cut the ends to length at 45 degree angles and leave them open, or cut them straight across and hot-glue a finial to a cork or rubber stopper sized to fit snugly in the end of the bamboo pole so you can easily remove the curtains for cleaning and redecorating.
Wooden Dowels
Hardware stores carry an array of wooden dowels ranging from pencil-thick to closet-hanger poles. Wooden dowels can be stained or painted to match any decor, including finishes with metallic paints to look like expensive antiqued brass rods. Round drawer knobs or cabinet handles can be screwed to the ends of the dowels and finished to match or offer dramatic contrast. Antique crystal door handles, shells and other found objects can also be glued to rounds of wood and screwed to the ends of the dowels for unique, removable finials that can even be changed with the seasons or for holidays.
Plastic Pipe
Rigid PVC plastic pipe is inexpensive and available in varying widths and lengths at hardware and home supply stores. Plastic pipe is also light, making it easy to mount and remove the curtain rods for easy cleaning and redecorating. Plastic pipe is usually available in white, unfortunately with permanent printing on it indicating its size and strength. PVC is harder to refinish than wood, but you can rub it down with steel wool and paint it (use fabric tab curtains, or cord-wrapped curtain rings, rather than wood or brass rings, to avoid scraping off the paint). Or wrap it with appropriately colored duct tape or the stretchy sticky gauze used to wrap horses' legs. Use pipe end caps as simple finials.
Metal Pipe
Metal pipe from hardware or plumbing supply stores presents a number of creative curtain rod options. Conduit is inexpensive and has a silver-flake finish that would complement modern decor and chrome-and-glass furniture. Aluminum pipe has a duller gray, almost pewter look. Copper pipe in an earthy brown shade is more expensive but is often available with a wide selection of threaded end pieces suitable for finials. Rough up copper pipe with steel wool or let it age to a rich green patina as well. A circular pipe cutter -- a small hand tool that lets you cut around the pipe -- will ensure that you can cut metal piping to the right length for curtain rods without crushing the ends. Digs Magazine suggests using 90-degree curved pipe fittings for mounting hardware.
Tags: curtain rods, supply stores, bamboo poles, cleaning redecorating, curtain rods
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