let's pretend my closet is a window

A few weeks ago I had mentioned wanting to make cornice boards for over Annie's nursery window and closet. Then the swap happened and we inherited the doorless closet problem. So I coerced John and Annie into accompanying me to Nell Hills for some fabric buying action last week and landed a half dozen lovely prints. I've been a busy little bee these last few days watching my brother Ryan while my mom is out of town and then sneaking off to sew whenever everyone's asleep or accounted for (shout out to all those who have hosted Ryan this week - huge help!). 

Anyway, here's a real-time, in progress update on where we are with the cornice boards. I bought a huge piece of foam core board at Michael's last week with Ryan. He carried it out to the car and was offering to sell it to people he ran into in the parking lot 'for good money' he said. Ha. Anyway, I took it and drew this shape:

Then cut it with an exacto knife to make this:

On each side, I scored flaps, but left them attached. Then, I covered it with batting and a Jonathan Adler print called Limitless. My staple gun's staples were too long and punctured the fabric so I borrowed my mom's regular paper stapler (Annie permanently disassembled mine last week - thank you ma'am). The whole process was a pain in my arse. I made sure my mom's stapler was fully loaded before I left her house. But at least half of the staples didn't catch straight and were unusable. By the time I made it to the ends, I was out of staples and energy. I ended up taping a lot of it and using tacky glue. Super classy. But, alas, it's not possible to finish without a few more staples for the ends. I guess that means I'm in the market for a new stapler. Anyway, here's where we stand at the moment:

I can't actually hang it until I finish upholstering it, so John was my holder upper. I knew I got married for a reason :)

And then here he is holding it above that amazingly well UN-organized closet of ours (pendant flags will eventually go to Annie's new nursery):

Here's where things get Kylie-crazy. In keeping with my weirdness and still on a roll from having painted our built-ins orange, I had another winner of an idea for the closet. What if, instead of hanging drapes (which is traditional) under the cornice in front of the closet to close it off, I hung more bamboo shades? I know, I should work for a creative think tank and get paid to come up with more of these fantastic ideas. Because everyone wants to pull a sting to roll up their blinds and pick out a tank top. C'mon, you know you want to. Really, though. The closet is 80 inches tall. It's also an odd size in width meaning that closet doors would have to be custom ordered (aka expensive). And we had closet doors like that in our bedroom in New Orleans. That bedroom was even bigger than this one and it still felt crowded anytime we accessed it. So how much more so with this room? Too much more so. Doors are out. 

On to drapes. Drapes are expensive because of the amount of yardage you need for full coverage. And for experimentation purposes, I hung our shower curtain and realized that I didn't like how much bulk it's going to create when it's pulled to the side. So drapes are on thin ice. But still in the running.

Enter the bamboo blinds. We already have them on our window and love the look. They're affordable. And I can get them at 98 inches long, instead of 80 inches. So I can hang them 18 inches above the top of the closet so that when I roll them up, all the stacked bulk will clear the opening. You feel me? It won't hinder access to the top shelves and racks of clothes. The blind itself would be huge and look something like this, but in a darker color:

Source

Well, putting blinds over a closet is weird enough for me to not jump on buying them quite yet. We wouldn't close the closet that often. It's not like we'd raise and lower it five times a day. Just have the option to hide the mess on occasion and in doing so, match the existing bamboo. What do you think? Am I off my rocker? I need a few more days to visualize and then I'll pull the trigger. In the meantime, I need to find a reliable stapler and finish the cornice boards!