Made in the Shade - Part 1

I've been busy with other stuff lately so the DIY activity has taken a bit of a pause. Over the last week I did have a little project come across the workbench, so I thought I'd share here. Having shades on my windows is always something that I took for granted. Then I moved into this house, which seems like it hasn't really been used for quite some time. I know a retirement age couple were living here, but I don't believe any children were living with them. Well, as soon as we started using stuff, even though it all looked really nice when we moved in, things started to fall apart. The blinds were a big failure point. Some windows didn't have any shades at all, and I think this is why. They just left the bad ones off and threw a coat of paint on everything.

The above blind looks pretty good right? Well, there's a small problem. There are little nylon plastic pieces inside there that the strings roll over to articulate the fins up and down when you're opening and closing the blinds. Over time they become embrittled from I assume UV exposure.

Above is one that's still intact, but when they fail they just disintegrate and there's really no fixing these as far as I can tell. Time for some new shades for these windows!

Here I am marking the hole positions for the brackets and drilling them. This was the only place on the window or frame these could be mounted, so I had to be very careful not to split the thin piece of trim. The pilot holes being drilled helps prevent that.

First bit of trouble I ran into was with the hardware provided by the manufacturer. Now if I was screwing these into the wall, the included screws would work fine because they would be in the holes on the surface perpendicular to this. As it sat here, the screw heads were too proud of the bracket and interfered with that little tab, which is what holds the blind in place, so I had to come up with an alternative solution.

The best I could come up with was these drywall screws. They still interfere with the tab, but between torquing them down enough to sort of countersink the hole a bit, combined with a little tweak with a flathead screwdriver to open up the tab a bit, the blind snapped into place nicely.

Here they are all hung up on these bay windows. Now we can sit here at night and have a little bit of privacy. These will also come in handy in the mornings during the summer because this is on the east side of the house. It got awful hot in this part of the house at the end of the summer, even with the AC on, which is not to mention the fact that if you want to sit there in the morning, it will blind you with direct sunlight right in your eyes.

Last shade for the downstairs was for the door. It had one of the dreaded blind failures simply by our kids roughly opening and closing the door too roughly. The door is metal, so these pilot holes help here as well. It makes it so you can precisely locate the holes and so the sheet metal doesn't noticeably deform. Another problem with the hardware here, the provided screws were long enough that they would poke all the way through the other side of the door, so I had to track some down that were shorter.

Those exposed holes from the old blinds are pretty nasty looking. Luckily the new ones cover them completely.

This door is on the same wall as the bay windows, so same applies here. No sun in the morning when we don't want the heat, although we leave them all open in the morning these days. It's been in the high 20's and low 30's every night lately, so it's feeling a bit chilly in the house when we wake up. All done! One last thing for this area though.

A nice little sign above the bay window to gently remind us of why we make a home in the first place. Good Food, Good Friends, Good Times: Thanks to our old neighbors in California for this one ;). I had some curtains to hang still after these, but the post was getting a bit long, so I'll show those in part 2. Until next time, Steem On!