(no subject)

[simont]

Gaffer tape disappointed me again today; this time, by being semi-transparent.

This week I've started to have my usual summer sleeping difficulties, caused by it getting light outside my bedroom several hours before I actually need to get up. I'm a light sleeper (ahem) and that tends to wake me up; I already have excellently thick and dark curtains, but plenty of light still comes in round the edges of them.

So, on being awoken at 6:30 this morning by the sun, I lost my temper with it, and decided that since it had caused me to have an hour and a half to spare, I could usefully spend that time dismembering cardboard boxes and gaffer-taping them to my bedroom windows. Some hard work and a nasty paper cut later (thick corrugated cardboard is a lot sharper than it looks!), this was duly done, and I went to bed last night feeling fairly optimistic.

This morning, well, there was an order of magnitude improvement, but quite a lot of light was still coming in round the curtains, and it turned out that almost all that light was shining through the gaffer tape. Bah.

Comments

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

It's unfortunate that you have your bedrooms the way round that you do if you don't like light - I've noticed that my bedroom is incredibly dark compared to my spare room.

(That should confuse a few people reading this ;-)

[simont]

Presumably that's because the poking-out bit of house containing your spare room and my bedroom casts an enormous shadow on the window of your bedroom at that time in the morning? Not sure it'd work so well in my case, though, because the poking-out bit doesn't have another floor above mine to cast more shadow.

Anyway, the noise from next door would be far worse than the morning sun for keeping me awake, so I wouldn't want to swap...

[mpinna.livejournal.com]

I refuse to believe it! There are no problems for which the holy Gaffer Tape is not the ideal solution! :-)

[simont]

Fine; then you tell me how to make it opaque :-)

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

Slap on a couple of coats of black acrylic paint.

[simont]

I am actually considering that, but it'd be pretty inconvenient because I'd have to take the curtains down so as not to get paint all over them. I was hoping there'd be a simpler answer :-/

[mobbsy.livejournal.com]

More gaffer tape of course.

[mpinna.livejournal.com]

Use ten layers?

Curtains

[deano977.livejournal.com]

We have a similar problem with the bedroom we've chosen to sleep in being on the wrong side of the house from a morning light point of view. Unfortunately, we've still not sorted out decent curtains despite having been in the house 18 months; the ones in the bedroom are a pair that were in the house when we moved in. They're a sort of light blue colour with fluffy clouds on, have been used as dustsheets and are a bit paper-thin :-/

Any recommendations for where to get curtains? Preferably nice purple ones :-) We had a look at John Lewis and got a rough quote which caused us to go 'eek!'

Re: Curtains

[simont]

I got mine from one of the shops on the Beehive Centre, although I'd have to go home and hunt through the depths of my receipts archive to tell you which shop (let me know if you actually want me to do this). I think they were fairly expensive, but on the other hand they're extremely good, and they've served me very well in three different bedrooms so far.

Re: Curtains

[karen2205]

Go see my Mummy - http://www.villagefabrics.co.uk - we do a range of Curtain Express Curtains, and sell blackout lining (grr - should at some stage add that to the website), - your best bet is to phone the shop 01491 204100 and ask - though it can be a bit difficult to describe curtains over the 'phone! It's been a while since I've been in the shop so I wouldn't be surprised if there's more curtaining things I don't know about.

Our prices tend to be competitive when compared with John Lewis - but it all depends upon the size of curtain you need - Curtain Express curtains get expensive when you need more than one width of fabric - IIRC. You probably want to make your curtains a bit bigger than the window to prevent reduce the light coming round the edges.

[sphyg.livejournal.com]

You are Al Pacino in Insomnia. I've tried covering my very thin blinds with everything imaginable (within letting agency reason) and nothing works.

[mooism.livejournal.com]

I pinned a bedsheet to the back of my curtains. Which helped, but only because the curtains started out cream-coloured.

[simonb.livejournal.com]

Hmmm; have you tried silvered or black duct tape ?

Alternatively you can get aluminium foil tape and I can safely say that its completely opaque to light - used lots of it when dealing with the insulation in ejde's attic.

[simont]

Aluminium foil tape sounds like just the thing. Is that something I should be able to get easily in B&Q or similar? I might pop out there at lunchtime if so.

[simonb.livejournal.com]

I'd be amazed if B&Q stocked it. You could try Mackey's as they are far more likely to have it (along with many other types of tape which may be suitable).

If not I may have a roll around somewhere left over from the work in the attic.

[simont]

Good call; Mackays did indeed have some. Not yet sure whether they had enough (it comes in tiny 3m rolls); I'll find that out when I try using it this evening. Thanks!

[simonb.livejournal.com]

Well, if it wasn't enough I've probably got some of the 50mm side stuff from the insulation work in the attic.