Simple Double Curtain Rod with Bungee Cords

One of the things I love about Pinterest, besides all the new recipes to try and the fun projects to copy, is the "life hacks" (tips to make life easier) that get pinned. 

I have tried several of these tips. Some of them have worked better than others for me. Like, we tried fixing scratched DVDs with a banana peel... just didn't work for us! And I had no luck trying to reset my printer ink cartridges.  

But, once in a while I try something that works like a dream. 

Luckily I this happened to me recently. 

When we moved into our new home not long ago I tried to use the things that I already had to decorate, etc. 

I put up some valences on my front window that looked really good in our last home. But, the windows there were shorter. The window here was quite a bit bigger and taller (which I love by the way), so the valences looked pretty puny and out of place. 

I was determined to use them though. There were plenty of new things that we were going to have to spend a lot of money on, so I wanted to make these work somehow. 

After staring at them forever I concluded that adding some kind of window panels behind them might help them look better spatially. I found an inexpensive set of sheer panels at a nearby discount store, and hoped they would do the job. 

Then came the task of figuring out how to put them up. The house already had a curtain rod (not my favorite one, but free, so it will do for now at least), but that's what I already had the valences hung on. Replacing it with a double rod, or adding a completely new rod seemed like expensive alternatives. 

That's where Pinterest came in! I remembered seeing, and pinning, a life hack on there about hanging a double curtain up with bungee cords. I looked through my Pinterest boards and found the pin. 

It was so easy to copy that I didn't even need the tutorial. You probably wouldn't either,  but I'll explain how I did it anyway! 

Step One

Thread a bungee cord through the curtain where a rod would normally go.

Step Two

Attach one end of the bungee cord over the bracket from the exiting curtain rod (already attached to the wall).

Step Three

Attach the other end of the bungee cord over the bracket on the other side of the curtain rod (in my case, since it was a long window, I used two smaller bungee cords and attached them each to the center bracket instead of having one go all the way across).

Step Four

Enjoy your new double curtains without having spent a fortune or a lot of time! 

Easy Peasy!! It worked so well for me. Now I'm looking for other places in my home that could use a second window treatment layer.

P.S. I found my bungee cords at the dollar store in a bag with multiple cords of different sizes. So this really was an inexpensive way to get the results I was looking for.