Need a cover for high shelves

[Twayne]

Drapes

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[JoeSpareBedroom]

Drapes sound more expensive than curtains. Is this a ploy to get her to forget the whole idea?

[Dave]

I got into this one a bit late, but here goes. I had a similar issue with my shop in our basement. I needed to seperate the sawdust from the laundry area. I went to Lowes and got some of the cloth drop clothes. I installed brass tarp grommets in them, which alos served to hem them at the correct height. I then put hooks in the ceiling spaced about three feet apart in line with the top of the drape. The eye-bolts used to hange the drop ceiling wire are installed in a joist at each end. I used the galvanized wire that is for hanging drop ceilings as the "curtain rod" and strung the drape from the eye bolts. The spaced hooks are there to hang the wire over when I want to close of the area since the whole thing tends to sag. Inexpensive, easy to do, and doesn't clash with the washing machine! Regards, Dave

[HeyBub]

Opaque shower curtains. Couple bucks each at WalMart. Shower curtains are only six feet, so you'll probably construct overlapping layers.

I had to use shower curtains for a couple of windows where the regular 60" curtains wouldn't work.

Before you dismiss the idea as double-goofy, go look at what's available.

[Andrew May]

You mean she hasn't learnt the 'I could do that if I had a new tool' routine?

[Lumpy]

3D laser hologram of a pastoral scene floating a few inches in front of the shelf fronts.

Lumpy

You were the "OPERATION" game voice? Yes. Take out wrenched ankle.

[Chris Lewis]

According to jtpr :

Simple and inexpensive solution, vastly better looking than using a plastic tarp, a lot less expensive than custom "drapes".

Buy canvas painter's drop sheets. They come in a variety of sizes, they're very cheap and very rugged. Paint stores have them as do some DIY box stores. Check that the ones you get don't have objectionable seams. 4x12s shouldn't have any seams.

Dye (in the clothes washer) if desired, but we prefer the look of undyed canvas (usually a nice cream color) when we've done this.

The simplest way to hang them:

- to cut to length - it doesn't need to be hemmed. Stitching canvas is hard on a consumer-grade sewing machine.

- Buy a "large grommet kit" (grommets plus tools) from a fabric store (or whatever) to place grommets along the top edge.

- Hang from plasticized (wire-core) clothes-line cable eyebolted into the walls.

If you really want to put them on tracks, it probably wouldn't cost too much to get a commercial canvas fabricator (makes custom tarps for trailers, tents, awnings etc) to make them more like real drapes.

[If you want it dyed, it may be cost effective to get a canvas fabricator to do the cutting, hemming, dye and grommet approach.]

It won't slide that well on cable, so if that's going to be a nuisance, you could do the canvas in 3' or 4' wide sections - you just hold it out of the way when you need access to a box.

Since one common size for drop clothes is 4'x12', that makes things very convenient: Lop 2' plus a bit off the end, install grommets, install eyebolts, string grommets on cable and attach to eyebolts. Done.