It's Curtains for Us!

Don’t you just love it when you’re trying to do something and it’s not working out but then something else happens that turns out even better than what you originally intended? What? That doesn’t happen to you?

Well, when you go off half-cocked all the time like me (special blessings to my dear wife Cynthia for living with this madman all these years), trust me, it happens a lot!

Case in point: we were recently admiring our neighbors’ curtains, asked who they used, and they told us generally where the proprietor was located. No name—no address. I filed that info away in what I like to call my “Steel Trap,” a mighty mental magnet so strong that no information escapes (and unfortunately from which that same information often cannot be retrieved).

So I’m leaving the gym on my bike one day and I think, “I don’t need to go home right now. That curtain store they talked about shouldn’t be too far from here. I’m gonna go find it!” I’m not much of a suspense writer, am I? Of course I couldn’t find it.

But----------.

After fruitlessly riding around awhile I’ve given up and am just exploring the area before heading back. I look down a side street and I see what looks like might be a home decoration store. I pedal down there, look in the window and I’ll be damned, that’s exactly what it is.

I lock up my bike and come bouncing in the door of Trapitos




looking like the “Gringo from Outer Space”—gym shorts, sleeveless shirt, backwards baseball cap, Oakley’s—definitely not the standard issue uniform for the streets of Cuenca. A quick look around tells me I am in a really nice store.



The furnishings and accessories are all extremely tasteful, yet reasonably priced.

After a brief wait I meet with Catalina Jaramillo, Trapitos owner.



Caty speaks much better English than she gives herself credit for, so it is easy for me to explain our needs to her. We make an appointment for her to come to our apartment, she arrives right on time, takes all her measurements, and we book a follow-up appointment at her store.

At that meeting the fabrics she had picked out were absolutely perfect and her price, which included all materials (including wooden rods and finials) and installation, we found extremely reasonable. We gave her the go-ahead and she promised the job would be completed within two weeks.

All of us who’ve lived here any amount of time have dealt with these promised schedules and deadlines, so imagine our surprise when we got a call from Caty only 10 days later saying the curtains were ready to be delivered! Her installation team once again arrived on time (actually about 10 minutes early!) and professionally installed all the draperies.







We are thrilled with the results and highly recommend Caty Jaramillo to anyone in Cuenca in need of window treatments or any other interior design services. Trapitos is located in the Laureles building at Juan Iniguez 4-165 (west of Solano between Remigio Crespo and 10th of August). The phone number is (07) 2881836.