Lengthening Curtains

I have a secret.

Those Striped Curtains that I DIY'ed over the winter, are about a foot shorter than I'd wanted them to be. And I've hung them way wrong... If any home interior designer came to my house, they would probably storm out the door, swearing in discust.

If you've paid attention to interior design at all in the last year, you know that the latest trend is to have curtains go the entire length of the wall; ceiling to floor.

Hanging your curtains this way helps to heighten your room and make it seem bigger (or so the experts say). But since I bought my white curtains from Target instead of making them from scratch, I was forced to buy the 84" curtains, instead of the 96" that I really needed.

So, I sucked up my desire for floor to ceiling curtains for cost and simplicity's sake.

I faked it as much as I could. Since 3 of my 4 curtain panels would be hidden behind things like the entertainment center, I hung the curtains higher than they should be for the length that they are.

I didn't get a very good 'before' shot. This is the best I've got. I'm a terrible blogger.

But that one pesky panel that was exposed kept bothering me. So after staring straight down my couch directly at my too-short curtains, I decided I'd had enough. I'd do whatever I could - albeit minimal - to make these curtains a little longer.

So out comes the seams.

 
There was a 2 1/4" seam on the bottom of these curtains, so using my mom's handy-dandy sewing kit thingymabob, I took out the seam and sewed up a new seam.

So while the 2 1/4" isn't nearly enough to remedy the problem, it's enough that I don't want to pull my hair out every time I see this one curtain.

An easy upgrade for a little sanity.

 Now I'm on the search for an arm chair to put in front of this curtain to hide the problem even more!

How do you hang curtains in your house? Is anyone still using 84" curtains, or am I the only person left in the stone-ages?