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Hemming Ikea Curtains

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While Kay was in the army last November, I decided to spontaneously visit IKEA after work one day. It was the first time I ever went by myself. I went in search of curtains, but I may have bought a sofa as well…

OK, I did buy a sofa, and I sure hoped that Kay would like it because I forgot to ask permission before pulling the trigger! But this post is not about our Karlstad. It is about office curtains. I was sick of not having any curtains in the office or the master bath and I knew that the sheer material I bought would not be adequate for either room without some proper curtains, so I bought four sets of cheap curtains to hem: Two for each office window and four to double up for privacy in the bathroom window.

I decided to go for this red pattern in the office, to match the orange/red sofa and I was also nervous to be buying fabric without Kay. We had such a hard time deciding fabric for the living room and bedroom and we rarely make home decor decisions without each other, but he thought the fabric was fine, so I went ahead and started hemming.

A friend mentioned that I should try hanging them and basting to see if the curtains would be the proper length and then I found this tutorial for hemming IKEA curtains on Charm Stitch.

I decided to try out pinning and sewing the curtains directly at the window as the tutorial suggested, but I opted to hang the curtains up backwards so that I wouldn’t be flipping the fabric over and possibly screwing up my hem. I also had more room to work in the living room than the office, so it was easier to set up an ironing board and sewing machine out there. Since I was going to move the curtains anyway, putting them up backwards to hem and sew was not a big deal.

First I pinned and it was good to check because IKEA curtains are sewn pretty poorly and unevenly and it was necessary to adjust a lot.

Once I was happy with the hanging I lifted the curtain up on to my ironing board and ironed the hem.

Below you can see how sometimes I needed to adapt the wonky IKEA curtain to form a straighter line.

I’m not saying my line is perfect… I just tucked it in a bit so that it would appear straight from the front side of the curtain.

Once I had ironed, I would let the curtain hang and check how even it was.

Below is an example of a curtain pinned that needed reworked.

And here was the re-pinning and ironed hem.

It didn’t have to be 100% perfect for me, but close enough.

When the hem was OK I sewed in the weights at the bottom. Then I got lazy and started straight up stapling the lead weights in because I was just that lazy… and I figured that nobody is going to tell if I stapled them or sewed them, so why expend all the extra effort?

I plopped my sewing machine up on the ironing board and sewed my hems then.

Finally when the curtains were done I took them down and re-hung them in the office with the hem facing the window.

At some point I’ll take you some nice daytime pictures of the office windows. I was happy I got these done before my little sister spent the night on our sofa bed.

After the office curtains I hemmed the four bathroom curtains and layered some plain white curtains behind a patterned white curtain that wasn’t quite opaque enough on its own.

Have you got some IKEA curtains in your home? Did you have to hem them to fit in or did you leave them long?

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Karl arrives

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Our Karlstad is here! Hoorah for IKEA delivering things at 7:30 in the morning, leaving me enough time to make it to work at the usual time!

Kay was here the morning it came, but then he left for a short work trip so I had the boxes and the flat all to myself. And with Thanksgiving last week, I didn’t really have any plans for putting Karl together immediately.

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Karlstad Love

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Ever since I came across John and Sherry’s gianormous sectional on YHL, I dreamt of filling our new living room with something similar. Like, almost exaaactly the same, with colourful pillows included.

(Picture via YHL)

I obsessed a bit about what sofa John and Sherry had bought. The shape and legs looked strangely similar to the leather one Kay bought in 2008 when I moved to Switzerland.

There was a big “duh” moment when I peeked under our sofa and read the tag to confirm that Kay’s sofa is actually also a Karlstad sofa!

I knew that Kay’s sofa originally cost around 1500CHF, so I wasn’t really interested in finding out how much the huge sectional version would cost, but Kay liked the idea of continuing with the leather because it lasts a long time and it is easy to take care of.

Unfortunately, IKEA discontinued the Karlstad leather version and changed over to a slightly smaller sofa with tufts, which Kay heartily dislikes “because they are old-fashioned”. Dun dun dun. Never heard him call anything old-fashioned before…

Karlsfors sofa for 1999CHF from IKEA.

I even scoured the interwebs for used corner sofas in leather from Karlstad. I came really close to finding one in Germany, but it was dark brown, which is a huge no-go for Kay and it wouldn’t match anyway. Oh well.

But as you can see, our TV area in the living room still looks empty and lonely. And I still wanted a corner sofa, badly.

I debated internally for a long time if it was worth it to keep Kay’s couch or incorporate it into a sectional layout. I loved the idea of the chaises in the sectional from YHL, so I dreamt up buying an all-in-one like this and situating it somewhere where we could still use both of the balcony doors.

But the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was not a good idea to just get rid of a perfectly good sofa. And no matter how I worked it, it didn’t make sense to stick this beast in with our current sofa. It became too much.

I had fun playing with literally ALL the combinations of Karlstad sofas available and seeing what would work best for us. And as we used the living room the whole summer, Kay pointed out that we rarely went out the balcony doors by the sofa. Especially since now that he’s pushed the sofa all the way back to the balcony door, making them inaccessible.

Kay thought if it makes sense, we should just put a corner sofa wherever we please and use the door to the balcony by the dining table. I’m still annoyed that they open inwards because it wasn’t an option to change, but Kay is right… we are most often taking food in and out of the kitchen and it’s not necessary to have two doors to the balcony.

With all that in mind, I decided that the best fit for maximum seating would be a corner sofa without any chaises or add-ons. Now we just needed to figure out which color!

At 999CHF, white is actually the cheapest option. And if we are ever going to do white sofas, shouldn’t it be now, while we don’t have children? Kay was up for it even with the possibility of extra washing, but after looking at our space, I just didn’t feel like white fit in with our dark brown floors and purple wall. It would be a better match for the light oak in some homes here.

Of course, I still loved the idea of the dark grey, but I wanted to explore other options too.

The green was in our color scheme, but not bright enough to match our walls and it just seemed a little too cooky for our style. I don’t want any problems selling this sofa in a few years!

And purple. I’m not sure I could convince Kay about the new Sivik purple. I got the color on the walls, but an entire sofa is another deal. It’s also not the same hue as our walls and it’s a little more expensive. Hmm.

There was one thing clear. We would be buying the metal legs to match the leather sofa. Even if the sofas are different material and color, the shape is the same and the legs will match!What color do you think we chose? Anybody else a big Karl fan?

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Curtain burnout

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After I bought my fancy used Bernina, I got straight to work and sewed seven (7!) curtains the first week I had it. That included two blackout curtains for the bedroom, four semi-decorative curtains for the living/dining room and one sheer curtain.

The reason why I stopped at seven was because that last curtain, the sheer curtain, didn’t turn out well.

It was perfect on both sides, but in the middle it was about 2″ longer than it was supposed to be so it drags on the floor in the middle. I am not pleased.

I called it a day and took a break from sewing to put the dining room back together for early Thanksgiving with friends and the next weekend I attempted sewing another sheer curtain. This time I planned on gathering the fabric up at the top and doing a better job cutting the fabric straight so I wouldn’t have this uneven hem problem.

Well, suffice to say, I had problems handling the sheer voile and I don’t think I used the correct gathering stitch on my machine. My bobbin finished in the middle of my gathering seam, which didn’t really help… and then I had difficulty pulling the gathering in.

When I finally got it around the right width for our windows, I had trouble sewing the curtain rail tape over the gathering. I put the finished curtain up and was disheartened to see that I’d accidentally pulled some of the curtain into the gathering in spots and as a result, my hem was super uneven and looks horrible.

Sooo I’ve given up on curtains for awhile. I am trying to muster the will to attempt them again, but this voile is so slippery and unmanageable!

Have you attempted curtains in your home? How did they turn out?

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All the dressers in Switzerland

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The market interest in Switzerland is low for dressers, so most stores here do not provide many options to choose from. Without a closet, most people have to buy wardrobes anyway and they often have everything you need – drawers, shelves, clothes rails – built in. With all that variety in one spot, most people find an additional dresser redundant.

With our drawer-filled wardrobes looking too expensive to order, we are on the market for some affordable dressers to go with Option 1 wardrobe.

Sadly, the biggest variety can be found at IKEA because they are international and already making dressers for other markets so it doesn’t take much effort to offer them in Switzerland. I didn’t necessarily want to go the IKEA route (yet), so we made trips to Pfister, Möbel Pfister, Micasa, and Interio to see what else was out there.

Not only was Pfister out of our price range (2-3k for a designer dresser? No way.) but we didn’t love anything there. Micasa was a boon, we didn’t even bother visiting Fly again because their quality is terrible, so this left me with Interio, which is a slightly nicer, more expensive version of IKEA.

Here are a the few options I found.

1. SCHRÄG Kommode from Interio for 699CHF ($762)

2. SCHRÄG Kommode from Interio for 799CHF ($871)

I thought these ones were slightly interesting but a little expensive for how short or narrow they are. The lower drawers in the taller one are quite slim and would only work well for things like undies and socks. I think on their own, each dresser is not enough and I wish the shorter one was at least wider or something for more storage.

3. HIGHLIGHT Kommode from Interio for 899CHF ($980)I really liked the Highlight series at Interio, but Kay and I both agreed that while this dresser is nice, the drawers are slightly too thin.

The wardrobe guys in Dogern warned us not to get too thin drawers or you are limited how much you can put in them. A few on top would be nice for under garments, but we need some big drawers for sweaters and pants. The drawers have a nice soft close though!

4.  Interio Kommode (discontinued)

These ones below were also at the store just a couple weeks ago, but are not available online at the moment, so I’m not sure on the price or if they are still available for purchase. They would also be around 900-1000 a piece.

I didn’t pay too much attention to the price because while the drawers are nice and deep, they have a closing mechanism that makes them slam shut with a loud snap. I definitely don’t want noisy dressers in the room if someone is trying to quietly pick out clothes while the other is sleeping!

5. HIGHLIGHT Kommode (discontinued) from Interio for 999CHF ($1089)

We just saw this dresser a week or two ago. I knew it was being discontinued, but as I write this, it looks like it’s already offline. I thought it was an interesting concept with a dresser and built-in cupboard. It is meant for use in living rooms as well, but I thought one could use the shelves for sheets and pants and things and the drawers for undergarments.

When it was closed, the shape was really cool. It looked a bit like a stacked dresser and the height was really nice for the cabinet part. There was also one more thinner dresser in this series (only in the very lower right of this photo) but it is also discontinued now I believe.

That was about it from Interio. They had a few other offers, but nothing else really fit our style or needs. I wasn’t totally in love with any of the dressers above either and couldn’t justify the price for what you get. The whole point of skipping the expensive drawers in the wardrobe is mainly to save money… so we have to save on what we spend on dressers as well!

After exhausting all our other options, we turned to IKEA, which has many dressers and price points. Without glossy white options for most dressers, we are leaning heavily towards the black brown colors because we already have several pieces of furniture from IKEA with this color and it matches our bathroom cabinets perfectly, which are visible from the bedroom.

1. Malm Six-drawer dresser from IKEA for 199CHF ($216)

It seems like every time a dresser is wide enough for the space in our bedroom, the designers cut it down in height a bit. This one might be OK, but I don’t like when dressers or sideboards are lower than my hips. It just makes them a bit awkward and it makes me feel like a giant.

2. Malm Six-drawer dresser from IKEA for 199CHF ($216)

This one is a nice height, but all of the Malm furniture is pretty darn basic. It’s just so simple. I like that there are two drawers at the top to divide for undergarments, but it’s not the most exciting design.

3. Hemnes Eight-drawer dresser from IKEA for 249CHF ($271)

Again, I’m not sure if this one is too short for my taste, but I like how it has more drawers than the taller options and unlike the Malm, the drawers are split on the top level. This would be easy to split between the two of us without making me nervous that I don’t have enough sweater and pant space.4. Hemnes Six-drawer dresser from IKEA for 199CHF ($216)

The other option from Hemnes is the six drawer version. It is pretty tall, which I like. The top drawers are a little thin and it’s maybe a little weird that the second drawer is bigger than all the lower drawers. If I designed it, I would have put the largest drawer on the bottom or made all the lower drawers equal heights.

Kay actually dislikes the knobs on the Hemnes dressers. They are too old-fashioned for him, but if we buy one we could always upgrade the knobs to something more chic like simple brushed metal knobs. Kay is just not a fan of anything not simple and modern! (No beveled molding, not a fan of lots of materials, textures, patterns, etc.)

5. Malm Six-drawer dresser from IKEA for 149CHF ($162)

I admit that ever since one of my first trips to IKEA, I have wanted this dresser because it has a flip up mirror and jewelry box type thing going on. Love the idea of having easier access to my jewelry!

If we buy this, we would put it in the small space between the windows in the bedroom, but I’m concerned that Kay will just pile stuff on top of it since that is his side of the bed. But you cannot pile things on this dresser or the flip top becomes inaccessible!

Well… decisions! To be honest I’m actually worried that if we get a shorter dresser with lots of counter space, Kay will also pile clothes on that. He can be really bad about leaving things out and it drives me nuts.

I don’t want to have IKEA furniture forever, but you really can’t beat their prices here. We don’t have any of the cheaper brands here like Target, Kmart, Walmart (hate Walmart!) or Kohls, so with house things we are usually stuck with IKEA or paying $$$. If we move in another few years outside of Switzerland, I don’t want to invest thousands in furniture that we’d just have to sell, so I think it makes sense to stick with IKEA for now.

We just have to decide between a low and wide dresser with more storage or a more aesthetically pleasing taller dresser with a little less storage. In either case we will probably get the last option as an additional dresser because I really want that mirror option, so maybe another tall dresser would be fine. It would help me avoid the Kay-clothing-piling situation.

Where do you buy your dressers from? Is most of your house also furnished in IKEA and the like or have you been able to splurge for some nicer pieces?