Curtains from a bedsheet

[Dawn Anastasi]

I've advocated putting curtains in rental property over spending money on mini-blinds and having them ruined by tenants.  However, did you know you can make curtains from a flat bedsheet?

I made these curtains from a full size flat bedsheet I got from Goodwill for $2.99.  This was my first attempt at this project and they turned out okay.  Much better than tenants taking a flat sheet and just draping it over a curtain rod!

Here is the other room where I used another flat bedsheet (unfortunately you can't see the second window).

I'm not saying that everyone might want to make their own curtains, but it can be a fun project and if you have kids, it's something easy enough that they can do it too.  They might feel a sense of pride knowing that something they made is being used every day by real people!

[Dawn Anastasi]

Originally posted by @Aaron McGinnis:

How many hours did it take you, and what did you pay yourself per hour to do it?

I didn't pay myself anything.  This is not the point of the project.  The point of the project is to have fun and be creative.  Not everything in life is about "how much per hour did it cost me?".

If you don't like making curtains and/or don't feel it's worth your time, then don't make curtains.  I just wanted to show what CAN be done if someone is inclined.

If I were to buy mini-blinds, I would pay about $8 per window.  For the 5 windows I did, it would be about $40.  

So I spent 5 x $1 on curtain rods and 2 x $3 on the bedsheets. The material costs were $11.  (Give or take; I'm excluding sales tax which is a few pennies more.)

Each panel only takes about 5 minutes once you know what you're doing and for 5 windows there are a total of 10 panels, so about an hour (adding in an extra 10 minutes for prep work to cut the sheets.   Since these were my first, it took about 2 hours because I didn't know what I was doing and had to do research and it took me extra time.