When Jocie and I purchased our home, we grabbed a pair of El Cheapo brand shades for our bedroom. They worked for about a month before the first one broke, and since then weve only had curtains shielding us from the outside world. If you were sneaky (and creepy) you could probably see us in our bedroom during the day when we had the curtains open.

Replacing the shades wasnt high up on my priority list, and we actually got used to the sun glaring on our faces in the morning. Plus, weve become early risers as Izzie and Lucy dont understand the joy of sleeping past 7am. And thats if were lucky.

A couple days ago I was looking for an easy project and finally decided to cross this one off my list. Id used Levelor brand shades before on this bedroom makeover, and they worked well enough. I decided to use the same, room-darkening, cellular shades again in our bedroom. Lowes will trim these blinds for free while you wait. The only downside is that causes the cells to stick together. Youll see what I mean when we get to that step.

Heres a quick shot of the old shade. You can see the broken shade on the right and how the caulk is in desperate need of attention.

I started by using a utility knife to cut away the exisiting caulk. Once you get things started, its usually easy to peel away the old bead.

One of the tricks for nice looking caulk is to use some tape to create a clean edge- similar to painting. I used masking tape but painters tape would work as well. I put a strip along the top of the window and another on the frame.

For this project, I used some DAP caulk. I applied a thick bead and used my finger to smooth it out. After a couple passes, it looked good, and I removed the tape.

The blinds come with universal brackets for inside and outside mounts. Often older windows wont have space for attaching window treatments, and youll be forced to position them on the face of the window trim or even further out on the drywall. Inside mounts are nice because the blinds fall tight against the window, and thats what I chose to do. If youre doing this project, do yourself a favor and pre-drill the holes.

The blinds snap into the brackets, and youre done. almost. Remember how I mentioned that getting the blinds trimmed causes the cells to stick together? If you just open them up (like the directions say), a lot of the room-darkening membrane rips off, and they look ragged. To avoid all that I grabbed my utility knife and tediously cut open any cells that were stuck together. It was slow going.

A few decades later, I was finished, and the blinds were installed. Looks pretty good right?


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