Some home improvement projects can produce a lot of dust, like when dealing with drywall, concrete, and mortar. Additionally, when you have contractors coming and going into your home, it’s nice to have a temporary partition for privacy. You can buy a plastic dust containment door at Home Depot for $30, but that’s expensive for a piece of plastic, and it only covers a 3′ x 7′ door opening. One option for covering a large space to both block dust and create privacy is by hanging blackout curtains on a sliding track, as shown below.
- Blackout curtains on Amazon (2-pack for $20, but now the price is $108)
- Ceiling curtain track (2-pack for $60)
Note: if you don’t need to slide open the temporary wall, you can screw some 2×4 pieces of wood to the ceiling and then screw or staple the curtain to the 2×4 wood. You can also replace the curtains with thin (or thick) plastic or canvas drop cloth. In my case, I wanted the ability to easily slide the curtain wall open when the contractors weren’t working.
I first bought a lightweight shower curtain, but it was more expensive than the blackout curtains, and it filtered light, so anyone could see through both sides.
The curtain track just screws into your ceiling, either into joists or just drywall, using anchors.
You can also adjust the length of the track.
I went with two tracks and two curtains. Where the curtains meet in the middle, I had one curtain partially hang on the hooks of the other track for about 1 foot of overlap. This minimized any gaps in the middle for dust to get through.
CAUTION: While you might not think dust will get very far, you’d be surprised how wrong you are. Before I put up these curtains, dust managed to make it all the way to my living room, as I saw a thin film of it on my laptop cover. Also, there was a thin film of dust on the kitchen floor as well. While cleaning large flat surfaces like floors is easy, it’s not when dust gets into many nooks and crannies or in rugs.
The next time you need to do home improvement that could generate a lot of dust, or if you just need a temporary privacy wall, the ceiling track and curtain solution above may be just what you need, unless you want to spend all day removing dust everywhere.