Over the years we’ve lived in our present house, we’ve had ongoing problems the curtains over the french doors. Double glass doors mean there is a lot of space to cover and, particularly with our heavy winter curtains, the supports keep coming loose at the wall. I’ve have expected a nice concrete lintel over the top and I’ve got just the SDS drill to deal with that… but what sits above the doors seems to be mainly plasterboard. Perhaps there is a lintel further back and the plaster board is just to extend the recess but, short of pulling the whole thing apart, we’ve left with a bit of guess work and two screws for each of the three supports not being quite enough for the job.

What I’ve done this week is create some wooden plates. Those are fastened with four screws and the supports screw into them. The theory is that the wood is a much more stable material to bear the weight so, in effect, each support has four screws holding it to the wall and also spread over a larger area. It looks pretty good and feels pretty secure for now but I need to wait and see how it holds up. If it seems to do the trick, I’ve got another curtain pole upstairs which might benefit from an application of the same approach.