$20 Projects: Roller Blind

It's hard to believe we've already been in the Northeast Portland Bungalow for almost four years. Of course! when we bought the house, we thought we'd be in this house for "3-5 years." Of course we thought that.

Fed up with so many minor things that we just lived with (and hated) this whole time, we placed a few of these minor projects on the chopping block. Things like:

• The bruised-avocado green bathroom paint.
• A home-made railing on the basement steps, made from 2x2 wood, duct tape and nails.
• Chipping paint on the woodwork in every room that we have not yet completed (which is every room except for the kitchen and dining room).
• The cheap cafe rods and aluminum blinds that keep out no light.

The lesson I'm learning is that: you should fix those little stupid things! Yes, it's only chipped paint, but if you wait four years to fix it, you will spend four years resenting your woodwork. Fix the stupid stuff.

Let's talk about that blind. Did you know you can go to any big-box home improvement store and buy a black-out roller blind? We had to go with the 55" length which was roughly $18 dollars. They cut it to length in the store, instructed me on how to install it, and pointed out the hardware I needed, which was 97 cents. 

So, "bright"-side, $19 took us from this:

 

To this:

The aluminum blind is "closed" in both pictures. The only difference is the roller blind.

The sad part was that the first time I tested the roller blind, I ripped it. The window is tight enough that I had to really squeeze the roller blind in behind the aluminum blind. So the cheap plastic material snagged on the hardware for the aluminum blind. Doh! 

When I bought the blinds, he offered a fancier fabric option, but I thought to myself "Why would I want a fancy fabric when it is a secondary blind? Psshh!"Live and learn. Maybe I can salvage it in the future by trimming it or something.

Why are there two blinds? This is a temporary situation- though we will always have two blinds. For aesthetics, I have a wooden blind to install in this window (one-inch slats, just like the kitchen blind). However, they don't block ALL the light. The pictures about were taken between 6:15 and 6:30pm. This is a south-facing window, and though the sunlight wasn't direct, you get the idea. 

We did plenty more today, but I see that I really didn't get any "after" pictures to post. So I'll post more about the shed, railing, basement flooding, bathroom painting, trim hanging and spare room painting tomorrow (or soon, at least).