Thursday 8th July 2021
Find out about GoodGym TaskForce
Report written by Beth Nelson
My second mission of the day took me to the lovely Mrs K. Once I'd negotiated the Fort Knox-esk flat security system I was greeted by Mrs K and given a quick tour of her wonderfully light and airy flat.
Mrs K showed me her bedroom and pointed to the curtains and curtain pole that she would love to be replaced; she had managed to source what looked to be an identical curtain pole from good old IKEA, but was unsure if it would be a simple pole change. Mrs K explained that weeks ago her brother had promised to come and help her change them, but weeks had turned to months and she got fed up with waiting for him...hopefully GoodGym could step in and finally get them changed!
Out came a small stepladder which Mrs K placed underneath the pole, at first I thought wouldn't be tall enough, vertically challenged GoodGym'er plus high curtain pole didn't seem to be the winning combination but miraculously with a little bit of stretch it was! I attempted to push the curtain pole up and out of the fitted brackets either side but it was too long to manoeuvre in a slick way. We made the decision between us to cut the sticky tape in the middle of the pole, as after all "what's the worst that could happen" 😄.
Once the sticky tape was cut it enabled the pole to be shortened, rather than poles apart and we could finally move it out of the fitted brackets. We did one side at a time which allowed us to safely remove the old curtains at the same time. Now was the moment of truth, would the new IKEA pole fit the brackets that were currently up?! Thankfully, it fitted like Cinderella's shoe.
The next stage was to place the rings on the new curtain pole, after some quick mental maths we decided on 14 rings for each side and fitted the corresponding number of hooks to the curtains - which with some efficient team work was done very swifty! I went back up the stepladder and began to clip the curtain hooks onto the rings as Mrs K held the bottom of the curtain, barring a few missed clipping attempts we managed to get both curtains successfully hung. One old curtain pole and two old curtains down...one new curtain pole up and two new curtains up, success!
Camden
The refurbished area is becoming a hub for food growing, gardening and wildlife activities