Blinds, Blinds, Everywhere There's Blinds

Many of you may remember that the house has Roman shades. If you are not familiar with Roman shades, they are basically one piece of fabric. The big downside is you can't let just a little light in while still maintaining some semblance of privacy.

To address this, we went to Lowe's (after discovering they were cheaper than Menard's, plus we had a 10% off coupon) and purchased some plantation style faux wood blinds. We bought blinds for the living room (4), master bedroom (2), full bath (2), and the stairs (1). Thankfully, we had previously purchased blinds at Menard's on clearance that we thought would fit perfectly inside the bathroom windows. Why am I thankful? I'm thankful because I didn't get them cut (nor did I buy all the blinds and have them cut) prior to attempting to install them. Once I took one set out of the box I quickly learned that our windows are not deep enough for inside mount. So, I guess we have shallow windows (we're working on expanding their emotional depth).

Now, as we were purchasing the blinds I was happy with a feeling of dread. Happy because we were getting rid of most of the Roman shades. As for the feeling of dread, I couldn't quite place it but I remembered that installing blinds were a pain in the ass. Wasn't sure why, just knew I was not going to have any fun.

Sunday I quickly remembered why I hated putting up blinds. Two reasons: 1) You have to hold the blinds up (plantation style faux wood blinds are HEAVY to hold above your head) while your partner traces the outlines of the brackets; 2) The screws the company gives you are made out of something akin to lead mixed with pewter mixed with clay. Let's just say that after the 10th screw stripped I was making up curse words. It was at this point I remembered that the last time I installed blinds I promised myself that I would get different screws. Away to Farm & Fleet I went and purchased screws made out of actual steel (what a novel concept), though, the package I bought didn't have enough screws (found this out at home) to install all of the blinds (I have one window left).

As for the tracing problem, i found that due to the size of our windows, if I used the valance as a template, it solved the problem. After I figured all of this out, it was smooth sailing. I must say the windows look muuuuuuch better and it's not as gloomy inside the house when you can crack open the blinds without the crazy lady next door looking in your window.

If you need to install blinds at your house, I would be happy to tell you what to do while I'm watching you with a beer in hand.