apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

here's another bay window dilemma; so i've got the bay window in the front of my apartment, in the living room. i'd like to put curtains up on the three sides, so how many panels do i hang? two to each window/side seems like it's going to look like way too many hanging curtains, but one each sounds dumb too.

has anyone ever hung two very wide curtains across the entire thing, pulled in to the middle window of their bay window? i know this sounds confusing. i hope there is some visualization...

Here's a renters flooring question:
There are janky old carpets in my apartment. I have had them cleaned, they are still yucky. Under the carpets there are janky wood floors. My landlord is ok with me removing the carpets and will even pay for the removal, but doesn't want to replace carpet or redo floors. I thought I'd clean, clean, clean, clean and then paint over the janky wood. What do ya'll think, is it too much work and is yucky wood any better than janky carpet?...I'm inclined to think yes...but I don't want to create a mess I can't live with.

Hi Shannon, I once lived in a place with a bay window, where the centre window was wider than the outside 2 windows. I hung single panels on the outside windows, so that when open the curtains hung on the outside edges. The curtains on the outside windows basically framed the inside window. On the centre window I hung a pair of panels, like a regular window. Each "junction" had a single panel when all the curtains were open, so it was balanced and not too much fabric in one spot. The most difficult thing was hanging the window hardware so it didn't look crowded and uneven, since this was the days before the adjustable rod hinge for bay windows was readily available and affordable. The adjustable rod connector is a godsend!

I've seen a single curtain across the whole bay elsewhere. I decided against that look primarily because it would have lost me valuable floor space which I needed for furniture. I think it could work if your bay is very shallow, otherwise it's a space eater.

Hi Sharpy, I personally think janky wood floors are way better than yucky, dirty carpeting. A worn finish has a patina to it and speaks to the history of your place. Dirty carpets just look dirty. Judicious placement of furniture or an area rug can often take care of spot areas that have more damage beyond simple wear. Painting the floors looks country to me, which is great if you like that look, but you're kind of stuck with it if you don't (plus, as with refinishing the floors, where do you put your stuff while you're painting?)

Some pitfalls that I and some friends have encountered when removing yucky carpets, so it's a good idea to really explore what's under there and think about the ramifications before ripping them up:

Are the carpets glued down or affixed with carpet tacks? In our current home we found previous inhabitants had glued faux-wood vinyl tiles to the wood (!) when we ripped up the carpet. It took several weeks of hard scraping to get enough of that gooey black stuff up before the refinisher would touch them.

A friend pulled up her 40 year old gold shag last summer to discover the finish wasn't too bad, but when the last decorating had happened, the painters dripped paint all over the floor (oh, don't worry about drips, we're putting carpet in!) She spent weeks on the floor scrubbing the drips up with acetone. Plus, when they put the carpet in initially, they ripped out all the baseboards--the carpets hid the gaps all those years, but she had to replace all the baseboard/shoe moulding herself when she ripped up the carpet. It is very time consuming and takes a bit of skill to cut all those joints with a coping saw so they meet neatly, and you need a long vehicle to get the moulding home, since you want to buy pieces as long as your walls, rather than piece them together out of shorter lengths.

It's worth getting rid of the carpets, but chances are there will be some amount of effort to overcome some unforeseen problem. Because there's always an unforeseen problem when reno'ing/redecorating!

Thanks...very helpful....There is vinyl tile under my
carpet in some rooms....I pulled I bit of one tile up and it didn't look too bad under, but I think this may be wishful thinking. I would prefere refinished wood over paint, but as I'm a renter I'm not ready to invest much money or too much time into the project. It sounds like the glue scrapping is quite a project, but I am ready to attack the carpet.
Thanks so much.

Sharpy - I got my landlord to agree to pay up to $250 for any unforseen problems (like replacing broken planks) in exchange for covering the rest of the cost of the refinishing. It cost me right at a $1000 to do the livingroom, dining room and hall. I am not a nomad, so the investment really paid off. The cost, averaged over the time I have lived here with redone floors, came out to about $10 a month. My apartment is rent stabilized, so now I have a much much nicer apartment for way below market rate. If I had moved instead of making the apartment a place I could live with, I would be paying at least $200-$300 more a month. Basically, over the time I have lived here, I have saved just under $22,000 by spending a little to make the apartment nicer instead of moving to try and solve the problem. This approach won't work if you like to move all the time anyway. If you are looking to stay in your place for at least a few years, it might be worth looking into the hassle and benefits of getting the apartment done right.

Thank you so much, Shannon, for asking about curtains and bay windows and to favabean for the advice -- I've been fretting about this for months.

This is the first I've heard about adjustable rods specifically for bay windows, and I'm definitely going to check them out.

The option I was considering was to affix a continuous wire attached to the wall with brackets (they have this at Ikea) in order to deal with the weird angles. I was worried that they may not hold up to the weight of anything but shears, though.

Has anyone gone the wire route with curtains before?

I've hung the IKEA wire (with a couple of extra anchors) across 3 side by side bay windows and I wish I'd done it years earlier. It did take me a couple of hours to get everything screwed in/hooked up correctly, but I can't recommend it enough. I had already bought six heavy cotton curtain panels, but you could porbably get away with fewer panels. The wire definitely has no trouble holding up my curtains (just buy extra clips). It's super easy to open & close the panels now and the clips make it easy to change the panels to fabric, etc.

Thank you, sfgirl -- I think the wire is more my style than rods, and sounds pretty easy.

Thanks again -- I'm on it now!