Privacy, please!
We have a half bathroom on the main floor of our townhome. It's had a privacy problem for a while; there has been nothing covering the window for many years.
When we first bought the place in 2001 there were a set of ugly drapes covering the window. We took those down in 2004 when we repainted everything. At that time we ordered a set of custom venetian blinds. We were redoing blinds and drapes throughout the house, too. But the blinds we ordered for this window didn't fit. They were the right height and width, because we measured those dimensions; but they were too deep. This window is almost unique in our house for having a shallow frame.
We left the problem unaddressed for many years. It didn't seem like that big of a deal, anyway. The bathroom itself has good privacy, as the window is rather high up. It would take someone standing right out side it to see down to the toilet. And it's one floor up from the ground, so that's not likely to happen.
The real privacy problem is that the bathroom is at the bottom of the stairs to the top floor. When we walk down the stairs, there's a level view from the townhouse across the driveway. For many years that wasn't a big deal, either, as the owner of the house was rarely there. But six months ago a new owner moved in, and she and her family and friends spent a lot more time there.
We didn't want to try matching drapes to the green-and-white motif in the bathroom so we went with white mini-blinds. Sunday I installed this set of Levolors:
Levolor equips hardware stores that sell their blinds with a machine that cuts the width down to size. That was a huge plus for us, as the window frame is an odd size at 22 1/8 inches wide. Blinds in the common 24" size would have had to hang outside the frame instead of inside it- ugly!
Aside from that one plus, though, these name-brand blinds suck. They don't raise and lower smoothly. Depending on which way they're angled (controlled by twisting the wand on the left) they either pull up but don't drop down, or drop down but can't be pulled up. What a piece of shit. But after all the time it took to put them in I didn't feel like going back to the store to demand my $10 back. We don't really intend to raise or lower them anyway.
When we first bought the place in 2001 there were a set of ugly drapes covering the window. We took those down in 2004 when we repainted everything. At that time we ordered a set of custom venetian blinds. We were redoing blinds and drapes throughout the house, too. But the blinds we ordered for this window didn't fit. They were the right height and width, because we measured those dimensions; but they were too deep. This window is almost unique in our house for having a shallow frame.
We left the problem unaddressed for many years. It didn't seem like that big of a deal, anyway. The bathroom itself has good privacy, as the window is rather high up. It would take someone standing right out side it to see down to the toilet. And it's one floor up from the ground, so that's not likely to happen.
The real privacy problem is that the bathroom is at the bottom of the stairs to the top floor. When we walk down the stairs, there's a level view from the townhouse across the driveway. For many years that wasn't a big deal, either, as the owner of the house was rarely there. But six months ago a new owner moved in, and she and her family and friends spent a lot more time there.
We didn't want to try matching drapes to the green-and-white motif in the bathroom so we went with white mini-blinds. Sunday I installed this set of Levolors:
Levolor equips hardware stores that sell their blinds with a machine that cuts the width down to size. That was a huge plus for us, as the window frame is an odd size at 22 1/8 inches wide. Blinds in the common 24" size would have had to hang outside the frame instead of inside it- ugly!
Aside from that one plus, though, these name-brand blinds suck. They don't raise and lower smoothly. Depending on which way they're angled (controlled by twisting the wand on the left) they either pull up but don't drop down, or drop down but can't be pulled up. What a piece of shit. But after all the time it took to put them in I didn't feel like going back to the store to demand my $10 back. We don't really intend to raise or lower them anyway.