Here's what the remains of the old curtain looked like spread out on the living room carpet. The curtain was falling apart at the slightest touch.
We already had some heavy leatherette material Lisa planned to make RV curtains from, and we bought a package of snaps from Big R during our trip to Fallon last weekend. Lisa measured off enough material based on the old curtain and built a new one. This may sound easy, but it was a lot of work.
We do not have a sewing machine heavy enough to push a needle through this heavy fabric. Lisa had to hand-stitch the hem, a laborious process that took her several days. She then fit it into the upper deck, starting from the top-center and hammering the snaps into the fabric.
Here's what it looks like in place. There's a slight bit of slack in this one because the old one failed partially because it was stretched too tight. There's no intention of trying to make the inside of the RV light-tight, only to provide privacy. Besides, I don't sleep up in the "attic" anyway; I fold the couch on the main level down into a bed and use the "attic" to store bedding when it's not in use.
It's not particularly visible in this daylight shot, but here's what the front looks like with the curtain in place upstairs.
This took a whole lot of work, and I'm grateful to Lisa for dealing with it this week while I spent the days working on Day Jobbe. She says she has enough material to work on the "downstairs" curtain as well, which is the curtain that fits around the driver's compartment. That would be good, because the existing curtain is made of the same light material as the upstairs cover, and the only reason it hasn't fallen completely apart was because it wasn't installed most of the time. In fact, the RV dealer didn't know it was there at all; we found it buried in the attic bedding.
Lisa says she might be able to start on the downstairs curtain when I'm home next. I wish we had a heavier-duty sewing machine; it would make the work immensely easier.
