Bamboo Faux Window Valance

Remember how I was planning to use all these….

….to dress up the one (yes, just one) window in my bedroom?

Well, it’s all finally up and I’m really happy with how it turned out….eventually. Sure, there may have been one or two ‘measure once, drill twice’ incidents and about three hours spent trying to work out how that darn bamboo blind was actually gonna stay up there and look half decent though it all came together in the end.

First up was the roller blind which I mounted on the window frame…

As I’ve mentioned previously, we needed a blackout treatment and nothing really beats these guys for effectiveness and affordability. Shame about the looks though.

Enter solution one; el-cheapo IKEA curtains…

I love the simplicity of white hidden tab-top drapes on a narrow black rod. I hung these as near the ceiling as possible to give the illusion of height and they work really well to conceal the roller blind’s ugly plastic capping and cord whilst giving the room a gentle softness

Now, I could very well have left my window treatment at that. Because of where the roller blind is mounted it blends in pretty seamlessly, however, I had a vision (and how hard could it be to make a bamboo blind that’s supposed to be attached to a window frame into a valancey thingo that hangs off a pole? Well, not hard at all after three hours of exhausting the 101 best possible ways to do it!).

I’ll spare you all the trials and tribulations and just say that in the end I decided to cut the blind straight down the middle horizontally. I then removed the string and eyelets from the lower section and re-tied the binding thread (which sounds time-consuming though was relatively quick and easy) so I had a plain piece of woven matchstick bamboo.

I know it may seem crazy cutting up a completely perfect blind though I had no intention of actually ever using it as a blind. I did initially check out the garden section of the hardware store for some type of bamboo screening I could use instead though couldn’t find what I wanted – plus screening is way more expensive than a blind anyway.

I draped and wrapped my piece of bamboo around a cheap black curtain rod, playing around with a few different looks until I found one I liked (my blind is pretty evenly weighted though if you try this and find yours keeps slipping use some strong tape or pliable wire to keep it in place). Next, I simply hung it up on some brackets to conceal the roller blind.