After moving into our trailer over two years ago we have strived to make it feel more like home. The first step was replacing pretty much all the furniture with IKEA stuff, yes even the mattress. Then we had a friend redo our valances. We ripped up the carpet and put in vinyl flooring last year.
If you have ever been in a trailer you have seen the accordion/privacy blinds that work on string tension. Besides our’s looking like paper plates folded up they can get dirty and then the strings start to suck. Once the strings go you pretty much have a window with a permanent blind. In the case of our back window the accordion never worked well and the best we could do was get it about halfway up. We knew that we wanted to replace the blinds with regular curtains but didn’t have a sewing machine.
In September we stopped by Kate’s parents home to do some dry docking. Besides installing electric fan roof vents Roger also made custom curtains. Kate’s dad, Bill, is a good handyman and taught Roger how to use the sewing machine.
Technically he re-taught me how to use a sewing machine. In 5th grade home-economics class I made a killer football pillow.
-Roger
We bought cloth at Jo-Anne’s and curtain rods from Lowe’s. Roger watched the following video for the pattern:
Roger went with the beer pattern cause he’s so classy. This is next to where he sits during work hours. He got some leeway with the mancave-ness with all the sewing n stuff. Since the material was so thin we also put a pair of blackout curtains behind the beer ones. We used a double curtain rod setup inside of the valence. This blocks the sun during workdays and improves the insulation of the window a lot.
Kate took over in the “pattern selection” department for the rest of the windows. She spends most of her day working in the slide, as you can see with her computer screen in the photo below. To offset the tacky-ness of Roger’s beer curtains she went classy and subdued.
The two bedroom windows got a single curtain each since they are narrower. Since the valances have a different look here we went with a different fabric. These are about 85% blackout and make sleeping to 8am pleasant.
The effect that changing these windows has on the feel of the trailer is pretty remarkable. They look great but just as important they work better than the blinds that came with the trailer.
