The Green’s new ‘thermal’ curtains

Last week, Small Footprints challenged us to get our homes in order ready for autumn.

I looked through the list, procrastinated about a few items and settled on something a bit different.

We were reminded to draw curtains at dusk and open them in the morning to make the most of available free solar warming. The trouble is, the curtains next to our back door are a little worse for wear, and so is the door.

Last year we had frost inside the back door but funds haven’t allowed us to replace it this year, so we turned our thoughts to curtains.

Our cute house bunny has rather disgraced herself by chewing through our existing curtains, but I’ll grant her, the lining was also slowly shredding due to UV damage anyway, so I guess she just highlighted the inevitable. Mr Green and I have been on the lookout for the perfect curtains for a couple of years but so far they’ve evaded us.

Sunrise the bunny enjoying the last of the original curtains

 

Our challenge has been that we’ve needed TWO pairs of matching wide curtains to meet our needs and what are the chances of finding those second hand? Pretty slim I can tell you! Our last ones came from an old hotel and the quality was amazing. I couldn’t stand the things to look at; I’m just not a floral girl, but they were as warm as a duvet with thick blanket-like lining and lead weights in the bottom to keep them cosy around the bottom of that leaking door.

But with holes in the bottom and the blankets hanging out from behind the lining we’ve been searching even harder and a few weeks ago we hit our jackpot. But they were thin, very thin and not the sort of thing to keep determined drafts from wafting around my ankles or ticking the bunny’s ears.

So Mr Green hit upon the idea of taking the blanket idea one stage further – he suggested we line them with aluminium space blankets; which would be light weight (if not a little noisy). Apparently space blankets can reflect back around 90% of heat and as they are used by paramedics to help people with hypothermia, they sounded just the ticket.

But then another problem presented itself; for all my ‘green’ ways, a seamstress I am NOT!

I can’t bear sewing, greatly admire those who do (and am a little envious truth be told), but I won’t even sew on a name tape into uniforms; I just get out my trusty fabric pen and write on the labels. So I was standing there in the charity shop looking at these curtains, listening to Mr green’s fantastic idea and giving him the look. Ya know, the look that says he has to be kidding me if he thinks *I* am going to be sewing space blankets into curtains.

Nadda…

I got just the response I was looking for – an arrogant huff and a steely determination from Mr Green that HE would do the sewing.

Result!

In the end it was a two (wo)man job as he’d clearly bitten off more than a rabbit could chew. But credit where credit is due Mr Green did the lion’s share of the work and I just pitched in when he needed help guide the unwieldy folds of material through the sewing machine and thread the beast as he didn’t know how to do it.

And here we are: our new curtains, complete with space blanket lining. And because they are so noisy, Sunrise the bunny can’t get close to them without a warning sound going off so I think these will be remaining intact 😉

 

Two pairs of curtains for £17

Now lined with space blankets