A Crazy DIY

This is one of those crazy DIY’s that was a last minute thing after something else I tried failed. First I will give you a little reason behind the DIY so it all makes sense. So, in our front living room we have a fireplace area that we have big plans for in the future. But for now we just had it painted, added a new [very old] mantle, & added a little shiplap. Later we plan to knock the bookshelves out to add some windows on each side of the fireplace, but for now I had to come up with something to do with the bookshelves. I didn’t want to cram them with a bunch of junk so my next thought was to create some curtains for the shelves & I came up with kind of a crazy plan…

The Result

That’s right. Well, maybe you can’t tell from the photos, I made DIY linen curtains out of Ikea pillow covers for our front living room bookshelves. It all started when I started to DIY my own out of old grain sack fabric. I got them all made & put them up…. & hated them. It was just too bulky & too much fabric. So, as I was sitting there mad that I had wasted so much time making three faux curtain panels I saw these Ikea pillows [Ursula style here] & came up with an idea for the easiest DIY little cafe curtains ever. So I took all the inserts out of the pillows & hung them up on the tension rods by tying the strings around the rod loosely I got from Home Depot & voila… some DIY linen bookshelf curtains to temporarily hide this area. I know Ikea doesn’t carry all the colors in these pillows anymore so I looked up linen tie pillows on Etsy & here’s what I found [HERE].

So we went from this linen pillow below….

To these little linen curtains below in seconds…

The Plan

The plan? Well I’m hoping to keep these little curtains up for storage purposes & for style purposes until we can possibly add windows to this space [hoping for floor to ceiling windows.. crossing fingers] but that will have to wait so here we are. The decor isn’t final & I just kind of whipped it together for photos, but I plan on tackling this space soon. These floors will be getting painted/stained soon, but everything here on White Cottage Farm is always getting worked on so you guys already knew that.

I’m probably in the minority here, but I really like to make things temporarily look good & work for us while living in a fixer upper.. sure sometimes it’s double the work eventually if we are going to change it later, but it brings me joy to have a space look more complete. & in the end it took me two seconds to tie these little pillow covers up & I don’t think it looks half bad. you could use these as cafe curtains in a kitchen, bathroom, & over any storage piece. Now of course when I look at these photos I see unfinished floors, wrinkly linen, & just an unfinished space in general, but I wanted to quick share this tip with you guys in case it was something you needed! It’s all progress & not perfection right? I hope you enjoyed this little simple DIY today & thank you guys SO MUCH for stopping by the blog today! Be sure to follow me on Facebook & Instagram for more behind the scenes.