I recently made a pelmet box for the powder room at our new house and took photos along the way. I did it all by myself in about 45 minutes. It's easy and cheap! Here's the tutorial!
Supplies needed to make 1 pelmet box:
- 1/2 inch foam core board ($5)
- box cutter
- 1/2 yard quilt or craft batting ($3)
- stapler
- staple gun
- 1/2 yard fabric (price depends on your choice!) - tip: iron it to remove wrinkles!
- hot glue or gorilla glue
- duct tape
The first step is to make your frame. Cut the foam core board to the size of your window (leaving about an inch or two on each side, so if your window was 24 inches wide make the length of the board 28 inches or so). The width and depth is to your liking! Also, make two corner pieces. Do not tape anything down yet.
Start by stapling down your batting. A regular stapler will do for this. I wrote "top" (as shown below) so I always knew which way I was working.
Staple the batting along the edges. Ensure that it's smooth and pulled evenly. There is no need to stretch it too tight, otherwise it will ripple.
Next start stapling down the fabric. Be sure to pull it evenly (if you have a pattern) so it doesn't have ripples. See how my pattern is even along the edges?
Then, do your corners. Keep in mind, you cannot staple through duct tape so work around it. Here you may need the staple gun.
When it comes to corners of the corner pieces, wrap it like a present. Press your finger between the fabric and board and hold... and then...
Fold over so it's nice and clean. You may need an extra set of hands here to use the staple gun while you hold the fabric down (it depends how coordinated and strong with a staple gun you are).
You are done stapling the fabric on! Yipee! Now, for the top corner pieces that you set aside at the beginning. This is what will hold it too the wall (this is like a mounting shelf that rests on a nail). Basically, you schlep these pieces in the top corners. I used a combo of hot glue and gorilla glue and jammed it in the 90 degree angle so it was tight. I held it for a few minutes until the glue was mostly set (although if you've worked with Gorilla Glue you know that it needs to expand overnight).
You may be wondering, why not use duct tape or the stapler to secure these little triangular pieces? Well, since these two little pieces support the entire pelmet box, they need the extra help. You'll notice that the staples can come loose because they really don't grip into the foam core board that well (but it's good enough to hold the batting and fabric down). Make sense?
Almost done! The final step is to put two nails at the corners of where you're box will hang. This will take a bit of guess work. I had to move the nails below twice to ensure they rested properly on the corner triangle pieces. There is no need to use screws or drywall anchors, just regular old nails or finishing nails will do. Whatever you have laying around is fine. The finished pelmet box doesn't weigh much.
Here is mine all hung up! I apologize for the terrible photo! I blog at night once Nina is sleeping! :) Also, the wall color is not green - it's Benjamin Moore Kingsport Gray.
