Expensive but worth it

I am making progress on making the new house a home. When we bought the house it had massive sets of drapes in multiple rooms, but they had been hanging there for several years and desperately needed to be cleaned. I spent hours wrestling them down removing the pin hooks and hauled them off to be dry cleaned. When they came back the clerk was shocked at the cost, but I happily paid the over $300 because they are JCPenney home collection custom drapes with massive linen lined panels, multiple valance swags, and end pieces. The replacement costs would have been well over a thousand dollars, and the originals were still in good shape other than the decade plus of dust and dirt. 😅 Since getting them back they have spent weeks hanging in the closet, initially it was because we needed to paint the rooms first, then I wanted to move the rods, but I have decided to leave the living room rods extra wide and only shrink the dining room. Yesterday I finally got the dining room set re-hung and due to the shrinking of the rod mount I didn't use all the top pieces, but I am happy with how they look. 

Currently the pleats are a bit stiff and it will take them a while to relax, but they look like new.

plus I just love the color 😇 

In other crazy home making news; I bought a giant hall tree. Even I think it's nutz, we already have too much stuff as evidenced by the fact that it took 2 moving trucks, but I wanted it. 😅 The husband wanted a place to sit and put his shoes on in the morning, we have benches and trunks and I could have moved one of those, but a bench doesn't hang coats or hats or store extra shoes so. . . 

I tried looking for local used furniture, secondhand shops, but I couldn't find anything that suited so I searched online and what a mind-numbing 3 days of comparing photos, checking measurements, and specs. I settled on this monstrosity, when I ordered it, I was aware it would be a flat-pack and I was aware the package weight was just over 100 pounds, but I underestimated the number of pieces it would come in. 😅 In the photos I liked the inset panel design of the back but I didn't realize it wasn't 2 panels, each of those "panels" is actually 7 damn pieces. Yeah, it took me 2 days to assemble, and I had to have the husband help at the end stages, because

by design and as per the instructions, it constructs as 3 pieces that then have to be stacked

I didn't have any hope of lifting that and aligning all the pegs and dowels by myself 😏  to be fair the instructions do say it's a 2 man job, although I did 90% of it by myself.   

I have also made some progress on sorting out the shop but I'm still not ready to unpack it yet.