Had company today.  All because of a post on Facebook.  Uhuh, who knew?  This is the way it played out, began, or like they say on TV shows “X number of hours earlier”.

I posted yesterday that I had completed a project, to replace our living room drapes including the curtain rod.  Multiply 6 months times 4 weeks times 7 days times 24 hours to get the approximate starting point.   Fade out to black and white [only it was full summer then, with sunshine & colors, not foggy grey].

I gazed at our living room drapes, and the 12″ curtain rod with the broken cord that no longer worked.  Wandered out back, got my measuring tape, came back in and pondered. Measured, went out back, looked at boards, poles, pipe.  Pondered.  Looked in my fabric warehouse, poked a roll of brown ‘home decorating’ fabric, shook it out to get an idea of the yardage. Hmph.

Thought about it for a couple days.  Mind, I wasn’t just sitting while I thought about it.  I was in the middle of a huge bear order, and enjoying both the presence of our teenage granddaughter and the arrival of our newest grandchild.

Thinking drew me back to a 10′ length of galvanized pipe [aka conduit] over an inch in diameter.  I cleaned it up and spray painted it flat black, several coats actually.  Measured it again.  Dug through my boxes of inherited and collected hardware.  Decided I needed at least three shelf brackets with the curlicues on the bottom to run the pipe through and allow for a shelf on top. Considered items I might re-purpose.  Nothing ‘jumped out’ so I stopped by the hardware store in town. Three black wrought iron look brackets that only needed an 1/8th inch removed from the tip of the bottom curlicue.  Little hacksaw work, spot of touch up and they are good.  Hm, that pipe is open of course and I have no finials for it.  Adding something to the ends would serve two-fold with less chance of fabric loops sliding off the end, or the end coming out of the bracket, or insects taking up residence.  The bright blue cap off the bleach jug fit perfectly, so two of them surrendered to the flat black paint.