When we were finishing up the new dining room slider I was also working on updating the living room. With plans for the deck dropping money on new drapes for our 12 ft. front window just wasn’t in the budget so I decided to make the existing drapes and cornice a little more visually appealing. Here they are in all their original beige glory!
I figured since the drapes were a light color it shouldn’t be a big deal to dye the drapes a darker color. I wanted them to blend with the grey living room walls and fortunately the dye came in pearl grey, and since this was my first time dyeing something I didn’t want to mess with trying to come up with my own color. I did some googleing and decided to go with Rit dye and followed the instructions and bought enough for the drapes. The only thing I didn’t do was wash the drapes ahead of time, since they are probably 30+ years old I didn’t want to risk damaging them in the washer. I decided against the washer and bathtub to dye everything in (didn’t think they’d fit in the washer and didn’t want to turn the tub grey) and found a huge 32 gallon tote in the basement that would work.
Next up was figuring out how to get that many gallons of water boiling hot… the stove would take too long and luckily we had just replaced our hot water heater and I could increase the temp digitally and then fill it from the tap. Next up add the dye and the drapes! You have to keep everything moving during the dyeing process to ensure its even and this proved quite the challenge with these huge drapes (each one is 6 ft wide by 7 ft tall). Most of the time I just used my hands (in rubber gloves) to keep everything moving and sometimes a painters stick but it was actually a lot of work trying to keep the heavy fabric moving. And pretty sweaty with my face so close to the steam and my arms in the hot water. I didn’t think I burned myself and it wasn’t unbearable but I did develop some blisters on the tips of my fingers afterwards (not painful though), guess that happens after 45 minutes in very hot water! I wasn’t sure how long to soak them since they were so big or how dark they would get but after 45 min. I figured that was as good as it was going to get, and I was ready to be done.
Next challenge, how to wring out these super heavy, wet drapes in fresh dye and hang them to dry… I was very anxious to get the project started that day and didn’t fully think out all the steps before getting started so I was problem solving on the fly. Solution: Once I squeezed out enough water just set it on the basement floor and then hang it on the scaffolding we were using outside the slider, brilliant!!
I tell you hoisting those things up was work and I’m not known for my arm strength. I was able to wring them out a bit more too but I also noticed that some of the rust/dirt from the scaffolding was rubbing off on them so then I came up with another brilliant idea, hang them over the patio table and chairs! This was the better idea and a lot less of a struggle for me to handle on my own.
Next, find an old towel to clean up the dye water and figure out how to dump 32 gallons of dye water… we’ll wait for Mace to come home to take care of that one! Luckily the tub happened to have wheels on it so it wasn’t too much trouble for him. With a septic tank I also wasn’t sure if I should dump it down the drain or not, didn’t want to get scolded! It probably took about 2 hours to get set-up, dye, and hang everything and 7+ hours for them dry enough to hang back in the living room to finish. For my first time dying something (why would I start with a shirt right?!) I think they turned out pretty damn good!! The color is actually pretty even too, there are no noticeable color variations to my eye once they dried, though I’m sure there are some. And the color came out as a pretty good match to the walls too! All in all $35 bucks well spent to make dramatic, low cost improvement to the space!!
Comentarios