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Home Decorating

crown and curtain rod. . . not lining up!

15 years ago

I have a little problem. A very noticeable one at that. . .

We had crown installed in the LR and kitchen/DR last week. Touchups were finished over the weekend and I attempted to get the drapes back up last night. I took the brackets out of the wall before the installer came because it looked like I was going to need to move them down and I didn't know if they'd be in the way. Turns out I probably can use the same holes (I think from a distance the rod should sit just under the crown and this is how I want it.) but now I'm faced with the rod not hanging straight! I can see it in this pic and see in IRL and knew it when it was first done that the rod wasn't straight. I have that sucker stretched to the max and it needs to be to reach the length I want. Put it back up last night and if you look at the middle bracket, everything to the right looked ok and everything to the left under the crown was just crooked/dropped down. Can I fix the problem by just raising the left bracket up a bit? There's a little room yet. I remember someone mentioning use a dowel rod for support. Would that work? How thick would it need to be. The other problem I'm having is I got a little crazy drilling originally and the hole was too big. Point of story, the anchor wasn't staying in the wall (last night) so I was going out today to buy larger ones. That bracket was pulling out of the wall last night. When I postioned it where it was suppose to be it looked better but you can see in the below pic everything was attached properly and it's still bowed. So what I'm getting at is I'm not sure if just anchoring it to the wall properly will make the difference since it didn't before.

I'm sooo sick of drilling holes in this wall from curtains! It's starting to look like swiss cheese. Yes, I know patch em. It still looks like an armature patch job and I know they're there.

The rod stays. Somehow I need to make it work. What are your suggestions?

*This is an old pic, have a different table in front of the window and of course you can see the crown isn't up. Ceilings are 8' and we installed 3 5/8" white crown.

{{!gwi}}

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Comments (7)

threedgrad
15 years ago
Perhaps the middle bracket is too high. Take a long level and starting at one end of the bracket draw a series of light pencil short lines across the wall plus run measurement from floor up and from ceiling down. If you have carpet the ceiling down measurement would be more accurate. See if your level marks match up to the measurement marks. You want the level marks. I just went through this hanging drapes measurement stuff a couple of weeks ago. It can be time consuming and requires your patience. Hope it works out for you.
It's possible that the crown was installed to be level even though the ceiling may not be perfectly level. That might explain why your drapes look crooked.
User
Original Author
15 years ago
Threed - I'll measuring tonight to be sure. We do have carpet.

I'm sure the ceiling isn't level. Seems like nothing in our house is. The crown does look straight to me.

After I thought about my idea of raising the left bracket I realized that won't work.
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lkplatow
15 years ago
Could it just be the rod? I have a similar problem with the curtains in my guest room. It's one of those adjustable rods that goes from 44-80" or something like that. The problem is that in order to adjust, one of the rods slides inside the other rod. So the one side has a smaller diameter rod than the other side, which makes one side look like it's hanging lower/crooken than the other side. It's very noticable in my guest room too (to me - other people probably wouldn't notice at all). I'm not sure what else you could do, other than get one solid dowel or something to hang the curtains on instead of an adjustable rod. For me, I've decided to not worry about it now - my rod is in a little-used room and I have about a billion other higher priority decorating issues so I need to start letting some of the small stuff go. Good luck getting your rod fixed!
User
Original Author
15 years ago
Is is the rod. It's adjustable. I'm going to try using a dowel in the middle since I don't know what else to do. Everything measured even. I wouldn't worry about it if it were in a bedroom but it's in my one and only LR and the pic above was taken standing at one of the two entrances into the room. It's very noticable now that the crown is up. On the right no wall is showing between the two and the left it slopes to about an 1.5"+ or - drop.

Hopefully the dowel will work.
gk5040
15 years ago
Sometimes walls are not right. I have had to insert a few thin pieces of cardboard strips under the rod (between the rod and the bracket), to raise the rod just a hair. I have done this because the curtain was dragging a little and it drove me nuts. Maybe this trick will work for you and you wont have to move the brackets. It does look like your problem is the middle rod is a smidge too high.
User
Original Author
15 years ago
Gk - That's a genius idea about the cardboard. I will keep in mind! Thanks!

Also wanted to comment after rereading my last post I think I sounded kind of grumpy. Sorry, I really wasn't! I just didn't take care in my wording last night. It was pretty late.
User
15 years ago
Your middle support is definitely too high.

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