How to make a sink skirt curtain without sewing

My kitchen sink cabinet door gets a ton of use and abuse from my family. I’ve had to repaint it about 8 times already and I’m sick of it. Since cottage core is in full trend right now, I’m embracing the look of cabinet curtains and sink curtains. So I wanted to figure out how to make a sink skirt without sewing to change the look of my kitchen quickly without much work.

I’m happy to report that I accomplished that and I feel bad calling this a tutorial because it’s just such an easy DIY.

Hang your hardware

First of all, you need to attach your curtain rod and hardware which is super easy in this case. Determine where you want it placed, mine is placed right under the molding of the countertop and 1 inch in from each side. Then you only have to peel off the backing from the self-adhesive café curtain rod hardware and place it in that spot.

I recommend holding a level under the small curtain rod to attach the second piece of hardware to make sure the sink curtain hangs straight.

(UPDATE: In case you are wondering if the adhesive ruined my paint. It actually has not! The hooks/hardware fell off a couple of times because the glue wasn’t strong enough and the paint was undamaged. I ended up using the command strips cut to size which worked much better.)

Determine how you want to hang them

Hang your cafe curtains onto the rod by sliding it through the rod pocket panels. You have to decide if you either want to slide it into the sewn first top rod pocket of the curtain or the second rod pocket.

Then attach the rod to the self-adhesive café curtain rod hardware so you can determine what length you want at the bottom.

The left option looks more ruffled than the other. For my situation, the ruffles were better because I couldn’t hang the rod right against the top of the cabinet because of the molding. Otherwise, I would have liked the right option better.

Or you can use curtain rings but they didn’t work for me. Below I’m showing you why. Had I been able to attach the hardware right under the countertop, I could have used the rings. Since that wasn’t possible, you can see the opening from the removed fake kitchen drawer. I also wasn’t able to leave the fake drawer on the cabinet because it was in the way of the hardware.

Pin your curtain length

Now shorten your curtains. Use sewing pins to determine the length of the sink curtains. I wanted mine to be almost hitting the floor. Simply fold up the bottom hem and push the needles through the folded-up fabric.

Set curtain length in place with iron on adhesive

Use HeatnBond UltraHold Iron-On Adhesive or fabric glue instead of sewing to permanently keep the folded-up fabric in place. I like ironing the folded-up fabric down before adding the tape to the fold. That way you don’t mess up the length. Then simply lay the strip of iron-on adhesive on your fabric inside the fold, fold it back up, and use a hot iron to activate the adhesive and keep the fabric in place.
(This is the same iron-on fabric adhesive that comes with a lot of the Ikea curtains and is the same process.)

Hang your finished curtains

Hang your curtains and you are done. I used two panels so there would be an opening in the middle for easy access.

RELATED: My entire kitchen consists of DIY projects. I vinyl wrapped my appliances to match my cabinets. The colored stove also looks so much better instead of the white.
I made a DIY utensil rack to hang the spoons and cutting boards behind the stove. And I cut down the kitchen half wall to make the kitchen island. And I also peeled the laminate off the old cabinets to paint them.

All the above posts are also mentioned in my blog post about 13 ideas for updating a kitchen without replacing cabinets.

Don’t you think it adds so much charm and a bit of country style? I still love my modern accents thrown in there as well like my black and white dotted fabric.