Curtains are one of those things that I want to look good and be functional but don’t want to spend the money on. Especially the curtain rods! They always seem to hit me in the gut with their price tag and blahness. So I told Tony that I wanted to try to make our own. On the cheap! He was game and started thinking about it. He even took a trip to Menards to do some figuring. {I’m thinking it might have just been an excuse to get out of the house, but I am not one to judge.} I love what he came up with!
We decided to use 3/4 inch electrical conduit for the industrial look, price, and slidability of grommet curtains.

Curtains are from Ikea.

We used large “Z” hooks to attach the conduit to the wall. This 6 inch hook fit the size of our conduit and held it away from the wall a bit so that the curtain hangs and slides nice.

To finish the ends of the conduit, we fit galvanized caps on.

From what I could tell, conduit comes in 5 and 10 foot lengths. We have an entire wall of windows so we needed to attach the 10 foot pieces to make one long rod. We used screw couplers for that.

When you add your hooks and couplers, just keep in mind that your curtain won’t be able to smoothly move over them. So we placed ours in the center of the conduit where the curtains meet in the middle and at the ends where the curtain stops. Our wall of windows also has some natural breaking points where the curtains sit when open, so we were also able to place couplers/hooks there.

This is the rod for our room. When we first bought supplies, it appeared that they were out of 10 foot pieces, so we went with two 5 foot pieces, cut them down to the size we needed and then joined them with a coupler in the middle. {Come to find out, they had tons of 10 foot rods out in the back. arrrrr!} All well. The coupler works. IKEA curtains.

And here is the curtain in the boys’ room. Same set up. Curtains are ones that I made with some elephant fabric and Kona solid, charcoal. I bought the grommets from a local quilt shop and they were a breeze to snap on. No tools required! So easy!

I will be the first to say that this type of curtain rod is not going to fit in everyone’s home. It has an industrial, modern feel that might not fit in a traditional home. I think it works perfect for us and I am thrilled that we did it on our own and saved a penny. Here’s part of our receipt so you can see some of the prices. Love DIY projects that turn out!