Well, I have certainly learnt something new this weekend. Actually, I may well have ‘known it’ before but it was put back to the annals of my mind. During the last weekend in January, I made a trip to IKEA in Bristol. I bought all sorts of items from furniture to crockery, linens to mirrors. Each of these items had measurements adorning their packaging to assist me with my purchase. Clearly, I needed said mirror to fit in the available space in my bathroom, so knowing its width (well, radius actually …. it being a circular one) was crucial. And, I returned a ‘happy camper’ from the Bristol IKEA (apart from the car issues) with all items ‘fit for purpose’.
Yesterday was Curtain Purchase Day. This had initially involved measuring the drop and width of the window in question and scanning the Argos online catalogue to find a suitable colour/design to match my needs. A simple trip to Argos with the catalogue number in hand, failed. My desired curtains were not in stock. This was not part of the plan.
Onward to other purchasing missions to discover that there was a store selling curtains adjacent to the cat food shop (I know – I know how to live!). Not only did I manage to locate one perfect set of curtains (with trees on them!!) but, instead of shelling out on dry cleaning, I decided to purchase a second (different) set for another room. Positively skipping back to FWL to put the curtains up, I was stunned to find that both the drop and the width were incorrect. Please explain….?
137cm drop is too short for a drop of 120cm from pole to under the window ledge and 117 x 2 (which incidentally is 234cm) is not sufficient for a 190cm width window. Who knew? Apparently, window details are measured to a different degree of accuracy than shelves and mirrors. I am delighted the bathroom is now fully functional (and cleaned thanks to Mr FWL) and today, I have revisited said curtain shop and invested in the right width and drop curtains. [Confession: now I have decided which curtains are going in which room, I have also bought some cushions!]
But please, would it not be possible to measure curtains in some sensible way? Like the width in pairs for a start off…. ! If I told potential FWL clients how much half a tree would cost, it wouldn’t help much, eh?! Let’s keep it simple.
