Out With The Blinds, In With The Shades

Our house was built in the 80’s and you can tell. We knew when we bought the house that we would be changing the overall look of a lot of the rooms. We are taking it all a bit at a time and focusing on some things that we can do as we save up to tackle the bigger projects.

Two rooms that have been pretty easy to make into our own have been our offices. After both working from home for two months and sharing one wall as our office in the apartment, we were excited to each have our own office. We painted both offices the weekend we moved in and that is when we noticed the blinds that had been hidden behind curtains that were not exactly our style. Michael’s office had yellow colored blinds. They were not white that turned yellow, but actually yellow. My office blinds were green with a gingham pattern. I had never seen patterned blinds before and I did not care to keep them.

We knew that we wanted to switch to cellular shades, but we were trying to decide if we wanted to replace the blinds little by little or if we wanted to wait and do the whole house all at once. Michael eventually got tired of not having any window coverings and we decided to order new shades for both of our offices.

We measured our windows. Michael’s office was super easy with just one window. I have three windows in my office, but two of them are the same and the other matches Michael’s office window, so measuring was pretty quick in there as well.

The first place we looked for blinds was Lowes. We got the website and tried searching for blinds. We did not have great luck because our windows were not standard sizes so finding some that would fit was not intuitive. Michael suggested looking at blinds.com and it was so great. We selected light filtering cellular shades and were able to put in our exact measurements. Then we chose our cell size and color and before getting to pick the inside mount and cordless lift. Plus with them being the blinds.com brand, we are pretty sure that they won’t be discontinued when we are ready to purchase more.

Nine days later, our custom shades were waiting for me when I got home from work. Michael put the drill on the charger and after dinner we were ready to put them up. We started in my office and removed the blinds and old hardware.

Then Michael drilled new holes and mounted the new brackets. I can’t reach the top of the window sills very well so I helped by putting wood glue on the screws.

The pets are not allowed in my office so Chewie, our little shadow moped in the door way. Mouse got curious and tried to get a closer look before being chased off.

Once the brackets were mounted, all we had to do was snap the shades in and attach the handles. Once we got one shade up, everything moved pretty quickly. We finished the other two in my office before finishing in Michael’s office. It took less than an hour for us to do all four windows.

I love how clean and contemporary the new shades look. I like the way they look in my office even without curtains. we may end up putting curtains up in Michael’s office to darken the room a bit. I am excited to put them up in more rooms throughout the house.

Now that I have new shades in my office, I just need better lighting and we can call one room in the house done!