So tonight I undertook "Cave" transformation... or shall I say creating caves. I went out to the store to buy some black out curtains for our room and our daughters room. I had done some online searches and saw that Walmart, Target and Anna's Linens carried them. Since we have a Walmart here in town I thought I'd check there first. Needless to say I was super pleased to find black curtains which will match the one set that already does a great job of "blacking-out" in our room and even found the exact number of panels in "Eclipse Kids" in a lovely purple color for our daughters room. I thought I was going to have to get two sets for her room a plain white black out set and some pretty pink or purple set so she wouldn't necessarily catch on to my blacking out her room plans. I came home and proceeded to begin installing said black-out curtains (forgot to mention the curtain rods I also purchased)
It was super tempting to just screw the mounts into the wall, I always hate drilling the holes putting the little plastic do-hickey's in, then screwing in the mounts, but I wanted to do it right since I imaged the blackout curtains were probably pretty weighty and we had two panels per rod since our windows are something like 77 inches across in each bedroom. I did it the long, strenuous, "Right" way all by myself. At one point I was getting super frustrated and somewhat tired from the manual screwing (stupid brackets didn't really allow enough room for the power tool to get in there and do the job) then I just sort of channeled my inner momma bear and grunted and got it done. It sure felt good to go into each room, turn off the lights and take inventory of any other sources of light.
We had given our daughter an alarm clock several months back, not because she needs it to wake up with, but instead because sometimes she wakes up entirely too early!! (especially on the weekends) It is really amazing how bright everything else becomes when your room is pitch black. So I unplugged her clock and took it out of her room completely and she also had a little CD player/radio that had a red display light which quickly lit up the whole room... unplugged that too. She's been at her mom's for the last couple of weeks for summer vacation... so my plan was to have her blackout curtains up when she returned, in hopes that maybe she won't so much notice the pitch black darkness of her room, but more just the normal adjustment period of getting use to your room again when you've been sleeping elsewhere for a couple of weeks. One thing that I really noticed when I tested out the darkness... she's got glow in the dark stars and paint all over her ceiling and BOY HOWDY!! Those stars glow BRIGHT when you first turn off the lights. Hopefully that will give her enough light to feel comfortable and fall asleep.
I can't wait to test out our room tonight. I mean I am a professional sleeper as it is... I am out like a light about 2 minutes (or less) of my head hitting the pillow, but I do get up several times a night to go potty. I read somewhere that often times it's not really that we need to get up so much as something else wakes us and then we get up. I noticed that our neighbors security light goes off right outside our window probably hundreds of times a night, it picks up when a car drives down the street so its on again, off again constantly. I am hoping that the addition of these black out curtains will eliminate any sleep disturbance created by that security light. My hubby is a much lighter sleeper, so I am also hopeful that the blackout curtains will bring him a full, peaceful, deep, restful nights sleep.
Cave no. 1 and Cave no. 2 are ready and waiting. The next step in our primal/paleo lifestyle is complete. :)
So a bit of an update for any others who might be considering cave transformations in the future. I guess it's just something you have to do so that you can learn from it. I got a curtain rod, drilled holes in the wall, installed them myself, etc. I was very proud of myself.
ReplyDeleteWell after the very first night I realized a couple of things, so I want to pass them on to you so that you can keep them in mind when you are making your purchases.
I measured the windows and got rods that were slightly longer than the width of the window. I am going to say that you really need to go out a good 5 inches (or more) from the frame of the window to help block out any of the light that comes between the curtain and the wall.
Next, (BIG ONE HERE) don't make the mistake I did, Check out the way the curtain attaches to the wall, mine came with brackets that you screw into the wall, well where the curtain rod sits is a good 2 to 3 inches out from the wall. First night I realized there's a whole lot of light coming in from the top of the curtain in that space between the wall and the curtain rod. You may also be able to block more of this by going several inches above the top frame of the window. What I've done since I went to all the trouble to actually put the drywall screws into the walls is I've just taken the rod out of the place where it fits and pushed it back against the wall, this leaves a lovely curtain rod bracket sticking out past the curtain but at least it blocks out a whole lot more light.
As I mentioned before our neighbors security light sensor points all the way out to the road so every time a car drives by it comes on and lights up our room. This was something we've lived with for years but as part of learning more about primal living I realize it was probably effecting our sleep efficiency.
I am also considering adding two more panels in our room and one more panel in our daughters room, thinking that maybe the extra bulk of having more pleats may block out any additional light that is still sneaking in.
So to summarize, get a curtain rod/bracket that is close to the wall, mount the brackets well past the width of the curtain and well above. (make sure you're length is long enough too so that you get lots of coverage on all sides of the windows)