Time passed, and when I took the house tour last Friday night I asked again about the curtains. She said that they would NOT work in her new house and told me to come up with a price to offer. She told me they were handmade and that she got the fabric from Calico Corners. They were fully lined curtains on two windows. Just beautiful.
So I went to work and found the price for a similar pattern in silk at Calico Corners then calculated a 5% decrease in price per year to the time the seller bought the fabric (the store confirmed that the prices increase 6-7% each year, but I gave seller benefit of the doubt and only reduce 5% each year). I came up with a price for just the fabric that was way out of my league because I hadn’t even added in the liner fabric cost or the labor to sew them. I consulted my mother who said that the price I was thinking about was a good one, but I still opted to email the seller last night and tell her that I didn’t want to offend her with a lowball offer and would therefore pass on the curtains.
She wrote me back this morning and said, “I don’t offend easily, but I thought I’d tell you that $____ is the price I was thinking about for those curtains and the curtains in the living room combined.”
That price was lower than what I had planned on offering AND she was throwing in the living room curtains which I had also commented on during the house tour on Friday.
SOLD! I wrote her back and said that sounded fine to me and that I’d pay her cash at closing for the two sets of curtains. So that’s two rooms done that I don’t have to worry about buying curtains for.
And one set of my valances from the sunroom in the old house will be used on the windows in the breakfast area, and the other valance from the sunroom can be changed a bit (thanks to Mom’s sewing skillz) to fit the smaller window in the kitchen.
So I’m well on the way to having a lot of the window coverings taken care of.