Oops, I Completely Forgot...

...to post about the storage/cat room.  I KNOW I wrote about it, so I must have deleted it somehow...  Or I transported to an almost-identical alternate universe AGAIN and in THIS one I didnt post about it (This seems to happen a few times a year - LOL!).  ;)

Anyway, at least I intended to (see here at  Feb 16th Item 4), and I DID do the project on March 9th.  So here is the missing post...

When my parents stopped traveling, I sold the guest room furniture to make it a storage room.  But when I got my 3rd cat (Marley), I decided they all needed a playroom.  So I decided to combine the two ideas.  The long sold wall of the room would become storage and the rest a cat play room (The "Mewsroom").

I checked for the depth I needed for boxes, vacuum cleaners, the carpet cleaner, etc; located the wall studs that would accept those things.  Naturally, the nearest stud was 2" too narrow, so I had to move out to the next one.  That was more space than I really needed to store stuff, but I will probably appreciate it in the future (if I'm IN this dimension in the future).

So, the concept was to take about 2' of the room and hang drapes to make a storage space and make the rest of it a cat playroom.  I tried to find drapery rods that could bear the weight (I have some old but nice drapes), but rods are not designed to float 2' out from the walls and I didn't want to go into the stipple ceiling for vertical support.  I checked out a few other ideas at home stores.  But what I ended up with was a 1" iron pipe.

Now, the iron pipe comes in 10' length and the walls were 10' 3" apart.  Pipe couplings only add 1/2".  So I thought about that.  The 2 ideas I came up with were"

1. Attach 1.5" boards to the walls (1.5 plus 1.5 makes up the 3"), or
2. Hang the pipe from 3" corner braces

If I had used the boards, I would have have to fancy them up.  Plane them to size, sand them, chamfer corners, stain and finish them, etc.  I just didn't feel like doing all that.  Maybe I will next year.  I went with just hanging the pipe on corner braces.  Hey, I had other things to do, and the gardening projects can't be delayed at this time of year!

So, there I was deciding to hang drapes from a 1" pipe.  I decided that wouldn't work.  Drapery hooks don't slide over pipes.  But shower curtain rings do!  Which gave me a further idea.  Why not get some nice light outer shower curtains?

I attached the corner braces to the stud.  The board was there to hold the other end of the pipe.  I couldn't be at both ends. 

When I maneuvered the pipe onto both braces, there was enough movement for the pipe to slip off one.

So I added wood blocks on both to keep the pipe from moving.  I'll screw the wood in place one of these days...

Here is a clear picture of the shower curtain pattern.  Not to plain, not too busy, not too cute.

And the closet is looking better.

The lamp will be hung up soon.

Games I love, using some freed-up space!

Here are a few pictures of what I wanted to hide behind the curtains...

Here are some of what it looked like afterwards...

 That cats loved the changes...

Isn't that a nice curtain to hide stuff behind?