School’s back in session, and the horizon from I-575 North in Cherokee County has changed; you know which building I mean. Locals started calling the new Cherokee High School building “Cherokee University” back when it was still under construction, and up close it’s not hard to see why. Two full floors of Global Learning Classrooms wrap around a curved wall of windows that runs the length of a basketball court. That curve became my job to solve.
I’ve been teasing this project on social media all summer, promising the full notes once everything was installed and tested. Here’s how the job landed on my desk, what it actually took to build, and why I headed back after it was done.
The drapery for this school almost didn’t happen. Somewhere in the stack of specs for the new building, a line item called for motorized drapery on a curved track, and it slipped through the cracks until the project was nearly finished.
Once the builder’s team caught it, finding help got complicated fast. An expansive motorized system on a curved track isn’t something you order off a shelf. It required someone that could measure, fabricate, and install the entire system without handing it off between companies. Most workrooms handle one piece of that job, maybe two. Almost nobody does all three, which is why the search dragged on as long as it did.
The lead eventually made its way to United Supply Company out of Charlotte, NC (a vendor I work with), and they pointed them in my direction as a business that could handle everything from fabrication to installation with no need to hand it off. Of course I said yes. I mean, who doesn’t love a good challenge? Oversized drapery, on a curved track, motorized, on two different floors, done on a short deadline with a budget that had already been spent…. Well, this is why they come to us. We do complicated.
Here’s the part that still makes me chuckle though. This job could have gone to any workroom in the country, but it didn’t. It ended up at my shop, twenty minutes down the road, still in Cherokee County, GA. My kids, having attended another Cherokee County school, have played ball against this school and left it all on the court during championship games. They’ve run cross country in the woods behind the school and they have friends that went there.Though United Supply didn’t know any of this when they referred the job to me. All they knew was that the job had to be done properly and they knew I would handle it.
Once I saw the drawings, I understood why nobody wanted to touch this. The motorized track runs 45 feet along the curve of the Global Learning Classroom wall on each floor, then turns the corner and continues another 7 feet down each side wall. Before a single yard of fabric gets cut, a curve like that has to be templated by hand, which meant taping paper across the space and tracing the exact shape the track would follow.
The fabric came in from Fabricut Contract on two pallets, more than 300 pounds of double wide material that had to move through my workroom before it ever reached the school. By the time fabrication wrapped up, the two floors combined had used 102 yards of double wide fabric (204 yards if you count it the standard way), added up to 336 pounds of finished drapery, and required 668 carriers to hang. That’s not a typo. Six hundred sixty-eight individual carriers, snapped onto ripplefold tape one at a time.
We had one shot to hang it all in a single all day push due to builder deadline requirements. Our four person crew was on site for close to ten hours, working well after dark, pulling and guiding yards of heavy fabric through the curved space. Four motors had to be wired, programmed, and tested before we could call it finished. We walked out close to midnight, sore and unusually quiet but the track was secure, the drapery hung beautifully along every foot of that curve, and we had finished the entire installation, on both floors, in one single day.
Track installation and the same wall a few hours later.
Back to school means the classrooms are finally full, which means the real test is just starting. Part of taking on a job like this is guaranteeing our work will survive the masses that have to touch it throughout a normal school year. Being available after the install to do quality checks and ensure all is running well right before school started was one of the assets they got when they hired us, because none of this helps anyone if they don’t know how to work it. When a builder has contractors to choose from nationwide, dependable follow-through can be what ultimately leads them to a local workroom. If something needs attention next semester, I’m only a twenty-minute drive away, not a long flight.
The same curved wall, before and after.
When it comes to complicated window treatments, commercial or residential, we can handle it. Any shape or size. If you don’t know where to go for help, reach out to us, we love a good challenge.
The Case for Carrying a Fabric Through an Entire Room
