1/23/2018

Roman Blinds - A Tale of Two Blinds

by Heather on 1/23/2018

So Dana wanted to title this post "Blinded by the Light," I just wasn't feeling it even if I did laugh out loud at her song rendition.

Roman blinds from mini-blinds are not new. Not by a long shot and there are a plethora of tutorials out there, so I am not going rehash the steps I took to make these blinds. I am going to offer my tips and tricks because I built my two blinds differently.

I didn't mean to build them differently, it just sort of happened, but I'm getting ahead of myself again because I tried to make roman blinds a few years ago, but I used way to heavy of a cotton duck, and the glue just didn't hold. So in my frustration of that failure, I stowed the other 3 mini-blinds away until last week. The blinds in the living room were starting to fall apart, and I was just a little tired of them so it was time to replace them. A trip to Ikea with Mom a few weeks ago netted me some fun tone on tone wood grain curtains. I was going to line my curtains with some muslin, but I ended up not having enough to do both blinds, so I didn't line these babies because I wanted them done now. Unwavering impatience, remember?

So the two blogs I referenced the most for this project were from Reality Daydream and Honestly WTF. From there I kind of just made adjustments as I needed.

My windows are super tall, coming in at 75.5" long and 32.75" wide. My $4 mini-blinds were 31" wide, so when I cut and hemmed the curtains I made sure that the panel would fit snugly inside my window frame. I added 3" to the width of my windows, and 2" to the length of my windows for the cutting measurements. I decided to utilize the finished hem of the curtain panel for one of my end hems, which why I only added the 2" to the length. On the nonfinished end, I did a double 1" hem. The long edges had a .75" double hem. While I was ironing the hems, I pressed the rest of the curtain because it was really badly creased from the packaging.

So the first blind I did, I followed {mostly} the directions from Reality Daydream. I placed the blinds 8" apart and then had a 3.5" section of curtain that hung down below the end of the blind because my blinds were only 72" long and my window is 75.5" tall. I could've added string to the end of my blinds and lengthened them, but I couldn't be bothered, and having the bit hang down look nice. I did try placing stitch to hold the blinds down, but in the end, glued them down using Beacon's Fabri-Tac. That glue is no joke. Its like superglue for fabric. It smells terrible but works wonderfully.

So after the curtain had dried overnight, which hindsight it didn't really need, I tackled stringing the blinds, the biggest hurdle was trying to figure out the proper orientation of the top rail. Since my curtain panel was a bit longer than my actual blinds, I didn't glue the last inch or so of the rail to the curtains, so that I could slide the rail into the hanging brackets. I also had a bit of a faff with the turning thing for the blinds. None of the tutorials mentioned removing the turning thing for the blinds. They only mention the lift cords, which while helpful was not helpful. So I ended up placing the top rail with the turning thing and the lift cords at the back of the blind.

For the other blind, I attached the blind skeleton as one step. I didn't restring the blinds, and either way was fine. One way was not better than the other, and luckily placing that top rail was faster, because I'd already figured out how the hanging bracket attached to the blind and so forth.

Hanging up the blinds was super easy and would've been without incident if I hadn't found not one, but two nails in the top casing of my windows, so I did have to adjust my brackets a little, but nothing that was swear-worthy.

I did need to go back and glue a bit of the top of the blind to the top rail, because I left a bit more space than I needed for the hanging brackets but better to much space than too little, and that glue did the job really quick.

After I put in the front stop of the bracket, I arranged the curtain edge over the bracket and along the side of my window.

Then it was time to adjust my folds and raise the blinds to where I wanted them. I don't like to have the windows fully blocked, but there is so much window, and there are 4 of these buggers on the front of the house. I just don't like people being able to see so far into my house, not to mention the house faces southwest, so in the afternoon and evening that sun is brutal. I need to have them low enough to where I feel like our privacy isn't invaded, but the sun can still come through. The nice thing about not lining these blinds is that they diffuse the light rather than block it like the other blinds I had up.

I am so happy with how these blinds turned out. I still have the dining room's windows to do, but sometimes it's better to just tackle a project piecemeal.

Oh, I did want to have a moment of truth here. I had to clear out some bins and things from the living room so that it would be picture worthy, so I piled it up into our dining room. After which I had the great idea to show you the difference in brightness between the two sets of blinds. You can also see how my little office area is set up in the living room. These were taken at the same time, and you can see how dark the dining room is compared to the living room now. I love that I don't need to adjust the blinds or turn on a light to see.