Curtain Pole on Ceiling

[cwhaley]

I'm nipping around to a friend's at the weekend to look at putting up a curtain pole for them.

Currently they have blinds which are attached to the ceiling. By the looks of it, someone in the past has screwed timber into the ceiling joists and then screwed the blinds into that timber. There's no brickwork above the window frames so the pole will have to go into the ceiling too.

What would be the best way of screwing the pole into the ceiling? Would it be worth replicating the timber in front of the existing stuff, then screwing the pole to this, or would the joists be 'present' enough for me to put the 4 brackets up?

I've attached pictures of the current set up as well as an outside shot. I've no idea on the construction of the roofs above these bay windows so not sure what's up there. I do have a stud/batten finder and will probably have to rely on this as there's no clean way of assessing what's up/behind there.

 

[DAZB]

You could simply use the exiting batten or, as you mention yourself, fit a new batten in front of the existing one if you need a wider fixing point. If you look closely at the existing timber batten you may be able to see the fixings even if they have been filled and painted so it's worth a close inspection and that will denote the joist positions.

 

[cwhaley]

Thanks that's useful. They want to keep the blinds up as well so I'll take these down first and see where any obvious fixings are (hopefully they've not used lost head nails and filled over). If I can see them, then I can use that to work out where the joist runs -- I'd rather screw brackets directly into joists than put up new timber.