Wood Blinds

2005.05.29

When I bought the house, there were no window coverings on any of the windows.  I wanted to get some blinds up before moving in all of my belongings, so I got up this morning and headed to Home Depot.  Previously I had measured my windows, so I knew what sizes I would need.  Inevitably, all my windows are weird dimensions, so I would have to have blinds cut to fit.  The only exception was the front windows, as they happened to carry some wood blinds that were the right size (well, within 1/4″ anyway).

As always on a Saturday morning, Home Depot was a complete zoo.  I had to wait in line just to talk to someone about cutting vinyl blinds.  When I told her I needed five or six of them cut, it was like I said I needed her to pull my car with her teeth from Portland to San Francisco.  “That’s going to take at least an hour.” She said.  An hour?  I’d taken a look at the guillotine cutter… looked to me like about a fifteen-minute job.  So I gave her my dimensions, and my phone number so they could call me when they were finished.  But I knew they wouldn’t call me.

In the meantime, I could take the 2″ wood blinds as-is, so at least I could get something accomplished.  I headed up to the house and got started.

I really thought this was going to be an easy project.  I mean how hard could it be to put up some horizontal wood blinds?  Screw in some brackets, slide the thing in… no problem.  Yeah well, it turned out to not be so simple.  The crux of the problem was trying to drive screws into the sides or top of the window, right next to the glass.  There just wasn’t enough clearance to get my cordless drill in there without driving the screws in at an angle.  And I couldn’t get enough leverage with a screwdriver, which was still at an angle.  I had some luck with my ratchet set, but still the same problems of banging into the glass.

So after two frustrating hours, I finally got the first set of blinds up.

2005.05.30

Today I continued putting up wood blinds in the living room.  At least the process went faster, due in part to buying a longer phillips bit for my cordless drill and an extension for my ratchet set.  So the other three windows took about an hour each, maybe even less for the last one.  I also picked up the vinyl blinds from Home Depot, and they did a surprisingly nice job cutting them down, with rounded corners and everything.

2005.06.01

I started installing the vinyl blinds today.  This was far easier and faster than the wood blinds.  For one thing, I am putting most of them outside rather than inside the window frame.  So there is plenty of room to drive screws into the face of the window trim for the brackets.  They don’t look as nice as the wood blinds, but they’re not bad.  I may want to add some curtains eventually though, it’s a little plain and austere.