Make Your Own Drop Cloth Curtains For Your Porch

1. Determine Your Measurements.

Decide how long you need your PVC curtain rods to be.

You can run your rods the full length of the 3 or 4 sides of your porch.

I chose to make my rods shorter so that they don’t span the full length of my porch covering.

One of the reasons I did this was the weight caused by the number of drop cloths necessary to cover the full length of my porch.

Also, I realized that I was going to need a special drill bit to drill the hole for my tie back on the two sides that would’ve been closest to the Hardee plank on the back of my house.

You will also need to know how high you want to hang your rods, based on how long you want the curtains to hang.

2. Cut your PVC pipe to the length that you want each of your rods to be.

Use a hack saw or PVC cutters to cut the PVC pipe.

You may need to sand the ends of each cut pipe because they will have some sharp pieces sticking out.

3. Paint the PVC Pipe and Hooks.

I used black spray paint to paint my PVC Pipe and hooks.

The hooks I bought were a minty green color so they needed to be a darker color to blend in with my brown porch wood.

4. Screw Hooks Into Porch Beams.

Secure hooks to the porch at the desired positions based on your measurements for your rods and your desired drop cloth curtain length.

Since I chose to use shorter rods on 3 sides of my porch, I was able to only use 2 hooks for each rod.

If you have longer rods or want to keep your rods from bowing in the middle, you can use additional hooks to hold the rod in place.

5. Attach Curtain Clips to Drop Cloth Curtains.

I did this really un-scientifically!

I folded my drop cloth in half and put a clip on each end and in the center.

Then I attached a few additional clips at somewhat centered points between the original 3 clips.

These can be adjusted after the curtains are hung.

I think I used 7-8 clips on each of my drop cloths.

6. Place Curtain Clips on PVC rods.

Thread your PVC pipe rod through the circles attached to your curtain clips.

7. Hang PVC Curtain Rods, with Drop Cloth Curtains attached, on the hooks attached to the Porch Beams in step 4.

This may require an extra set of hands!

8. Make any adjustments to the curtain clips to create even pleats.

I ended up rearranging my curtain clips on almost all of my curtains.

Turns out my eyeballing center wasn’t very accurate!

I even added a few extra clips on a few panels since I had some extras.

9. Decide where to place Tea Cup Hooks to secure Tie Backs and screw them into the post.

Gather Curtains to the side to figure out the best place to secure the hooks so that you can keep your curtains tied back.

Mine are placed about 36″ off the ground.

My Tea Cup Hooks were really easy to screw into my posts by hand.

10. Secure Tie Backs to Tea Cup Hooks and wrap around your Drop Cloth Curtains.

This is the easiest part of the process!

When I first hung my curtains, I hadn’t ordered Tie Backs yet.

I just used some strips of fabric knotted on the Tea Cup Hook and then tied around the curtains.

I love these big knotted Tie Backs I purchased a few weeks ago.

They really provide a finished look to the curtains!