Thanks for the replies, and Amysrq, what a lovely porch! My covered patio doesn't have walls like yours, though, so it wouldn't be quite the same. It is just open to the backyard, and where I need the sun to be blocked is all open. That west side spans from the house to a cedar post in the ground, with a solid shingled roof overhead, and flagstone patio underneath. I don't want to have 2 stacks of curtains in this area because a stack near the post would look odd, since there are no walls, and especially because it is an extremely windy location (Texas). I know that I am going to have to deal with wind regardless, but if I can pull all of the panels over to the side with the house wall, the stack will be out of the way, and I can secure them with a tie back or rope to the wall to contain them. Securing them to a cedar post just wouldn't be as secure or sheltered, since it is the corner of the structure that is most out in the open. The stack of curtains would be constantly flapping about in the wind. I would like the look of a copper pipe used as a rod, but I can't see how I could get around having to put a support bracket in the middle. S-hooks would be fine, or even clip hooks instead of using the grommets, but they still wouldn't pass by the middle bracket mount, would they? I will look into curtain tracks to see if that might work. I have to figure out some kind of solution since we built this cover to make our patio usable in the evening for eating dinner, and we have found that we still cannot use it from 4pm until the sun completely sets because the sun peeks under the roof all evening and aims itself directly at our patio table. Frustrating.

There is another wqy to add sheers behind your drapes and much less expensive than the 'Add a Rod' idea as well as less cumbersome than the bungee idea, depending on the type of rod you use for the drapes. IF you use a standard type curtain rod, there is a solid 'u' shaped hook you can insert into the bottom fold of the of the rod while inserting a regular cafe type rod into it to hold the sheers. They can be found at big box stores and often at drapery stores. lollll But I can't find it on the Internet drapery ads. Mucho inexpensive, mucho easy, and your sheers will definitely be behind your drapes as far as you want.

I can sympathize with the OP, but then we made several mistakes when ordering and hanging our curtains and rods years ago so I think it's the combination of all of them that annoy me. We only have drapes in our master bedroom where we have a large bay window. We should have ordered 2 sets of panels, because when they're shut (on cold nights) they are almost completely stretched out which looks silly, and when they're open they look skimpy. I also wish they were longer so I could have hung them closer to the ceiling, so next time will order ones that are longer even if I have to hem them. We ordered our hardware and drapery from Pottery Barn when we were ordering our bedding there, and I didn't give it too much thought at the time. As for the middle bracket, ours is a big circle at the base, which does draw my eye to it. It's probably not something anyone else would even notice, but it bugs me. I recently bought new PB drapery brackets on eBay that are less prominent (just a vertical bracket as opposed to a big, circular bracket) because I won the auction for super cheap, but want to get longer, wider panels before we put up the less prominent brackets. As if the too short, too narrow, and prominent middle bracket weren't enough, I also recently discovered that we must have accidentally ordered the large diameter drapery rings (meant for a thicker rod) rather than the small size to fit our .75" rod. It took me a long time to figure that one out-- we've had those drapes up for about 10 years now and I finally realized out why the rings looks comically huge compared to the rod. I know this is a bit long winded, but if it prevents someone else making the same mistakes, it will be worth it.

There is no reason for an installer to so poorly install a shower curtain that it pulls out if you hang on it, let alone if wet towels are hung on it. It should break and bend before coming out of the wall. You have not mentioned what the bottom of the shower is. If it is a tub, you want to hang the curtain short enough that it does not lay against where the curving starts going toward the bottom of the tub, or it will sit plastered to the tub wall. If you have a shower bottom with a curb, then you want it long enough so the liner sits behind the curb a bit. If you have no curb at all, like I do, you may want it so that the shower curtain just touches or just misses touching the shower floor. Mine just touches my roll-in shower floor. I had a tension rod for the first few months, as my contractor wanted me to be absolutely sure I was not going to want a glass shower front. The darned thing kept sliding down. Unfortunately, when they went to install the new permanent rod I was not at home and they installed it where the tension rod was, too low. I saw it and said that it was too low and they had to reinstall it. I did not want the curtain bent onto the shower floor They managed to hide the holes under the new position, but I was willing to have color-matched caulk to fill in the holes were they to show. I would have placed it a tad higher, so that it just missed touching the floor, but my builder really wanted to hide those holes. At least, if someone drops the hand-held, it cannot spray across the room.