11.07.2005

Fun in the shade

We are finally starting the decorating process for our new place. We unpacked all of the paintings yesterday and started figuring out what will go where. I also decided that the mini-blinds in the living room just weren't working. They were all the wrong size for the windows which makes them stand out, plus that is where we put the tiki bar and mini-blinds and tiki just don't mix. Since I never throw anything away when I move, I still had the bamboo shades from our old bedroom. They were the right width for the little windows in the living room, but they were way too long. I cut them down so that they are just the right size. You can do his with any type of blind or shade for a custom fit.

Here is what the blinds looked like when I first put them up. They extended about 3 feet beyond the bottom of the window and the cord went all the way to the floor.

before

The first thing I did was measure the window and cut the blinds about 4 inches below the length I desired.

cutting

Next I pulled out all of the extra bamboo pieces. This leaves the nice long pieces of string that I used to attach the bottom piece.

string

Finally, I attached the original bottom piece to give the shades a little bit of weight and a nice clean look.

finishing

I finished the shades by cutting all of the excess strings and shortening the pull cord.

final product

There will probably be a lot of home decorating projects on my blog over the next few weeks, but that doesn't mean I am not knitting. I am working on the avocado leg warmers during my down time. Here is a picture of my progress.

legwarmers

5 comments:

Michelle said...

avocado -- yum! if it's not lime green, it's gotta be avocado green!

Robyn Wade said...

yeah, after reading your post saying lime is the new orange I was so glad I skipped the orange. I might be a little trendy for once, or at least my lower legs might.

Michelle said...

That's funny. Yeah, I'm obsessed with lime green right now (though I'm sure that's obvious by what I choose to wear). Though orange will always have a place in my heart, I just never thought I'd choose another color over orange until I met lime green. Now I belong to lime green, though if it turns out to be un-trendy to like orange, I might go back to orange cause I'm like that.

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much for this post! I had no idea how to shorten my matchstick levolor natural woven wood shade before. I saw this linked from ehow, and the pictures really help clear up my questions. The only thing is I also have to worry about how the shade is more complicated than this, where it folds every 4 inches, so I think I may have less choices of length if I want it to look similar to the original look. Also I wonder if I can attach the bottom without wrapping the string around the bottom like that. This is a little more complicated than I thought when I bought them from Lowe's!

Robyn Wade said...

On those blinds I wrapped the string like that because that is how they were originally constructed. Another set I re-sized had little drilled holes that I used. Basically, you want to reattach the bottom the same way it was originally attached.