Sunday, January 1, 2012

Naked No More

We're slowly but surely getting window treatments installed.
When we moved in, the kitchen windows and sliding glass door were totally bare. We've since sewn a curtain for the window over the kitchen sink and hung Ikea curtains over the sliding glass door.
The three windows in the living room, plus all the windows in the bedrooms and bathroom had paper shades. These are probably the least expensive option possible - they're made of pleated paper that you just stick on to the window frame, "customizable" in that you can cut them to the proper width with scissors, they don't raise or lower with a cord but you could fold them up from the bottom and hold them at that length with the included plastic clips.

We thought for a long time about what we wanted to put in instead. We looked at vinyl blinds, metal blinds, and curtains. Our windows are original to the house (1969) so the stock sizes we found wouldn't fit. And since we have double-hung sash windows, where the bottom pane slides up to open, we didn't have a lot of depth available either.

We finally decided to go with cordless, light-filtering cellular blinds.

  • Cordless: Recommended anywhere there might be kids around since there's no danger from the cords
  • Light-Filtering: We like a dark bedroom
  • Cellular: Give a little bit of energy-efficiency and block some sound
After reviewing dozens of samples, we placed our order. Dana got some little spacers, which we spray-painted to blend with the window trim. These allowed us to hide the screws that went into the outer piece of trim. 

They do stick out a little from the frame, but this positioning won't get in the way when we open the window.



Many thanks to Nadine for this housewarming gift!