For the seven years we've owned our house, we've had a bedroom blind that didn't close completely. No, nobody could see in, but it still bothered us. I tried fixing it, but I couldn't figure out how to get the cords undone and reset. And we really didn't want to pay someone else to do it.
Several weeks ago I saw a display of blinds in a hardware store. The store would cut the blinds to the needed length. I went home and measured the current blind and the window frame it was covering. Then did nothing more, partly because I didn't want to carry a six-foot package on the bus.
Last week we had a series of errands that we would be doing with the car. Before leaving, we took all the width measurements for the window, including that for each of the two windows in the set.
As I looked for help in the hardware store, my wife discovered much shorter blinds that would fit the individual windows without cutting.
Yesterday was the day to install the new blinds. I gathered all the tools I thought I would need and opened a package. The directions were straightforward and I could see how everything would work. The blinds would fit in the window without problem, neither too big nor too small. Note that we intended to mount in the window frame rather than on the outside. That is, we would mount them inside the box that the window fits in.
I picked up a mounting screw and looked for a drill bit in the bunch of old bits I had in the house. None were small enough! I looked again and I looked in the tool box in the truck. The best I could find was a small box nail.
I mounted the nail in the drill, but as I suspected, the drill was almost too big to drill the topmost hole. I would have to go in at a slant. Now I knew why whoever installed other insert blinds had used only one screw.
I did succeed in getting the brackets mounted, but I had to use the smallest screwdriver to do it. The handles of the others were to big to get a decent grip in the small space.
I slid the blinds in the brackets, put the covers on the brackets, and mounted the valences without much fuss. We did crease a couple of valences, but we probably won't notice most of the time.
Wow, what a difference! The two smaller blinds make the room seem much bigger and open than the one huge blind did. And with less light coming in, we may get a few more minutes sleep in the morning.
