Cornice Window Treatment

I decided it was time to change the cornice in the family room with a more neutral farmhouse style fabric.

It was a bright tomato red/orange but the change brought this neutral linen with burlap trim detail.

For the past several years the family room has been very colorfully decorated with bright cottage colors, but as we’re preparing to sell our house, I’m trying to tone down anything that may appear a little too specialized and open it up for ‘the masses’. Ha!

Part of the family room walls are papered with a yellow background paisley print, it is a very nice paper, and I’m thinking that with everything else now being changed to mostly neutrals, that the wallpaper with just a tiny pop of color on the other side of the family room will be a fun accent.

This window treatment is one of the first changes to the family room, it’s an upholstered board valance above the 8’ sliding door that leads out to the screen porch and beyond to the patio, grill etc.

Here’s are some quick details on how I re-did the upholstered valance board.

I made the original board a long time ago, by cutting ¾ inch plywood down to the size I wanted and used simple mounting brackets to attach it to the wall above the door after upholstering it with padding and fabric attaching it with a staple gun to the back of the board.

Looking up from the floor between the valance board and the wall

to help you see the mounting brackets I came up with.

This valance or cornice is not a typical cornice I’d make. Usually I make them with a wood board across the top and attach the fabric to hang down the front. In that case the mounting system would be easy. I would just attach right angle brackets to the wall, set the cornice board on top of those brackets, and screw them into the board.

This cornice is made differently. I wanted the shape of the cut out top corners on face, so I needed the board to be on the face instead. So to mount this one, I actually came up with a unique way… I jimmy-rigged it! In my case, I had extra adjustable drapery brackets, that I could take apart. I used 2 adjustable brackets and create one of these mounting brackets.

Each mounting bracket is using on the back right angle part of the drapery bracket. One is mounted to the wall and the other mounted on the back of the valance board. They are attached with a small bolt and nut through a top slot lined up in the right-angle brackets.

Those jimmy-rigged brackets worked fine for me in this case because I had extra drapery brackets laying around… I have since found these brackets, actually for mounting a CB radio… they’d be perfect!

They are adjustable between 6″-10″ from the wall… I have about 6″ between the wall and the cornice board, so again, that would be a great bracket option. HERE is the link for the CB radio bracket to use for a front cornice board mounting.

The space created between the window and the valance board allows space for the shades, that are mounted on the wall above the window, to open and close without getting pinched by the valance. Yet, the valance cornice covers the shades.

This style of mounting allowed me to mount the cornice very close to the ceiling. That works as long as you have room to get your hands in behind the board to access the top of the bracket from behind it, to tighten the nut on the bolt.

The brown fabric I put right over the orange and green plaid fabric, (after removing the tassel trim on the plaid fabric). I simply stapled the new more neutral brown linen fabric to the back of the board. I needed to allow an extra 3 inches of fabric around the whole perimeter of the valance for stapling. (HERE is where I found this linen type fabric, it came with a light layer of padding/batting attached on the back of it. Perfect for this application, and doubly perfect because it was on clearance with another half off that!)

After I stapled the brown fabric on, I brain-stormed on what to add to it for a subtle detail. I had the woven linen stripe fabric left over from a curtain I had just made in the hallway a few days prior. I initially thought about adding that stripe around the outside of the valance, but since it is such a long valance, it really gave the illusion of being extra long.

So I decided it would be much better to have the detail vertical, but the striped linen fabric by itself just wasn’t enough. When I found this burlap/jute strapping literally hanging around in my sewing closet, it was clear it would make a great background to the stripe linen.

Aren’t all the nubby textures yummy?  I love it.  By cutting the striped linen fabric just wide enough, it just covers up the red part of the strapping and has that subtle detail I was looking for.

I gently raveled the edges of the linen fabric a little bit for that casual, natural look I was going for.

So simple, and already it’s making a difference. 

Here are some more of my sewing tips and tutorials:

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