Blinded By The Blinds

We inherited some gross blinds with our house. Basic vinyl blinds. But they’ve aged and dried out and cracked. We had one set completely missing a slat. Another had chips in it. Several had oddly yellowed wands (we don’t think the previous owners were smokers, but what else would this come from?!) and nearly all of them were slightly droopy in the center.

Like I said. Gross blinds.

We wanted some not-gross blinds. But here’s the thing: we couldn’t just replace them in one room because all the rooms (except our master bedroom) have a window with a street view. Have you ever seen a house with mismatched blinds in the front? It’s a little goofy looking (no offense if you have mismatched blinds, I’m sure it’s lovely).

We put it off forever, but finally took the $268 plunge (Yuck.) to fill our house with faux wood plantation blinds. However, with $75 in gift cards, free shipping, and a 10% back promo on my credit card (the main impetus for buying), we got it down to $174. Not the worst. Still, not great. But it was time.

The blinds arrived a few days later and we got to work dismantling existing blinds. The few that were undamaged went to Habitat. Mounting the new blinds was straightforward, but time consuming.

Drill, screw, snap in place. Add a crown molding-style valance piece. Done. Brand new faux wood plantation blinds.

The slats are 2.5″ wide, which provides significantly larger gaps for looking out the window when the blinds are open.

A closer look at the giant gaps. The blinds are Allen + Roth from Lowe’s. The one feature I didn’t budge on? A pull cord for adjusting the tilt. I really, really wanted this instead of a wand. Wands are annoying, pulls are fast. Just a personal preference from years of fighting wands.

The blinds make the rooms significantly darker as well. The vinyl blinds were translucent and these are not. Not at all. (Just ignore that mess in there…)

See how translucent they were? And the dozens of slats obscured the view.

Here’s the same shot with new blinds (and afternoon sun – thanks for the blaring white!). Suffice to say, we really like these. My only complaint is the valence. It’s kind of cheap looking. We set them high so they’d sort of blend with the window frame. I’d like to paint them a clean white to match the frames. Of course, that’s such a tiny detail and annoying task, so I’ll probably never actually do it.

So hallelujah, no more broken, gross blinds!

You pretty little things are welcome to stay as long as you’d like.

A few notes: You can take slats out of the bottom to customize the length, but it took me entirely too long to do one set, so I didn’t bother. It was only two slats though, so it’s not like there’s a pile of blinds on the windowsill.  As for cleaning, I’m certain dusting will be a cinch with a microfiber cloth since the slats are so accessible.

But enough about me, how about you? How was your weekend? Take on any projects you avoided for ages?