Valance Victory

We have a very complicated relationship with the vertical blinds in our dining room. We recognize that vertical blinds are generally terrible, but we didn't have a better solution for blocking the glaring sun in the morning, so we kept them. Deep down we knew we should get a valance to cover the ugly rail for the blinds, but we could never decide exactly what it should be like, so we did nothing. That all changed when we found a giant valance sitting on the curb down the street from our house.

At first I was skeptical it would fit our extra wide door, but it did look pretty long, so we measured and it was about half an inch short. I knew I could make it work.
The valance was also pretty ornate when we found it, with some serious molding. We thought we might use it as-is, but it really didn't fit in, so we stripped off the molding.

That revealed a striped pattern, which we eventually accentuated with paint, but before we could do that, we reduced the depth about an inch, which made it fit the space much better.

Once it was cut to size and sanded we started painting with some primer.

Then we moved on to the final coats. The top and bottom are white with a thick stripe that matches our cabinets. It's subtle, but adds a little interest.

I wanted to make sure it was mounted securely, so I used four L-brackets to mount it. Snapping a chalk line made this part much easier. I also shortened the rail the blinds hang on so it would fit in the valance.

Here's what it looked like before:

Before

And here's the finished product.

After