Curtains

            What is an office without curtains?  Well a bright one, or a cold and drafty one.  But is it also a bare one?  I’m not sure.  Did or do clients think that an office without any window covering as non professional.  Fly by night even?  I couldn’t tell you.  I can tell you that buying curtains is a not only a big expense, most certainly when you have 92 inch windows, but it is also a very difficult and daunting task.

            This past week we finally picked up a set of curtains that we liked enough to keep up for the whole week.  I’m not sure that they are perfect but I think they are pretty close.  The problem is that this is not our first attempt at office window covering. 

When we first moved in 10 months ago we went out and purchased a decadent set of curtains.  In order to figure out the world of curtains we had to speak with an expert.  Turns out you can’t just purchase two sheets of cloth and hang them up there.  You need sheers, valances, and sometimes depending on the panel you may even need more than two just to cover one window. 

In our early office days we went all out.  We got all the accoutrements to cover the windows with class.  We picked the fanciest materials to really wow our clients.  Unfortunately, due to the large window size we had to wait for the curtains to come in.  When they got here and we put them up… Well… They kind of looked cheap, or maybe over done. 

Our office is fancy.  If you haven’t stopped by yet, you should.  It’s in an old building, actually the Edward Haskell House at 345 Union Street, on the corner of Union and Cottage, here in Historic New Bedford.  We figured that the conference room was so fancy that so should be the curtains.  We returned them.

The one good thing to come out of that first experience was that we did end up keeping the sheers.  They added a light touch and some privacy to the office without making it look smaller or busy.

We had many other attempts at curtains since then.  We didn’t bring any back though.  Not until the weather in February and March seemed so cold that we needed to keep the cold out somehow.  Oddly enough, a week after putting them up, we’ve had the warmest week on record.

All in all I’m very happy with the purchase.  They are a reddish color (sorry, I’m a Crayolla 8 pack, not a 64).  They also say that they are an energy saver, keep the heat out or the cold out depending on the time of the year.  The worst part about the whole ordeal is that they only had 6 panels.  That’s right I’ve still got another two windows that are just sheers, and they are probably going to stay that way for another 10 months.