"Measure twice, cut once" is the time-honored truism. Well, I happen to subscribe to the "approximate once, cut as-many-times-as-needed-to-get-it-right" school of thought. Of course it matters not how many times you measure, for if you can't remember the correct figure, you end up cutting at least twice anyway. As they rang up the purchase, I couldn't remember for sure if it was 6 feet 5 inches or 65 inches across the top of that bedroom window. ...
Arriving home, I hurriedly pulled the kitchen blinds out of the box. Being a man, I crumpled the instructions into a ball and arced them across the room like a Michael Jordan three-pointer, right into the recycling bin. Swish! The box reverse-slammed right behind it. Vaboom! The blinds were up and running in no more than 45 seconds. Looking good and feeling loose!
I dropped those blinds down in front of the window, and yikes, they're bright white! The other kitchen blinds were off-white. Realizing they couldn't be returned now that the box and instructions were destroyed, I said, "I'll
live with it. They're not THAT far off in color."
On to the bedroom where it soon was apparent that 6 foot 5 was probably mistaken for 65 inches in the store. "No worries, we have the technology," I muttered to myself, reaching for the scissors to trim about six inches off one end. (The tape measure was in the next room, and real men don't use tape measures anyway.)
The scissors were too slow, so I trudged outside to the shed, rummaged around for a few minutes and came back with the industrial-sized tin snips. "They should cut through 10 or 20 louvers at a time," I thought. "Tin snips will also rip through those pesky upper and lower plastic frame pieces like a warm knife through butter."
One cracked upper frame piece and one tube of super glue later, I was back to cutting and trimming. After snipping both sides, it became apparent that cutting 20 or 30 louvers at once results in a small, yet increasing angle on each one, successively.
To put it politely, the edges of the blinds were jagged. I put down the snips and went back to work with the scissors in a vain salvage effort to make them more presentable. The whole works was hoisted into position and still found to be way too long. My kingdom for a tape measure and the patience to use it! But stubbornness and persistence finally overcame stupidity and bumbling--the blinds and frame fit the opening!
However, the blind supports were hung from the wrong edge of the window frame and backwards. That problem was swiftly fixed. So far nothing the curtains wouldn't hide.
Using my superior reasoning power, sheer logic, years of experience and power of will, I figured out exactly how the rod ends fit into the holders.
Tiny screws, big clumsy hands and petite little rod holders resulted in several screws falling out before being secured. What fun to thread little screws through small openings several inches from the point of attachment. I'm sure you can all relate to simultaneously groping for and losing screws while looking upward, holding the cordless electric screwdriver between your legs, balancing on a ladder and trying to curse in German.
One little screw happened to fall undetected into the computer printer--down inside the paper feed, which might have had something to do with that terrible grinding sound it made the next day.
Once the shades were up, the valance went on, and oh, so very sweetly, I must say. Next, all that extra drawstring cord was cut and the stoppers slid into position like I did so successfully in the kitchen. Exhausted but relieved, I reached over to bring the new shades down. They only came down about halfway before stopping. I had cut the extra cord all right, but neglected to put the blinds in the down position before doing so.
A few choice words and pondering of options later, matches were lit to fuse the nylon cord pieces together. They did burn nicely and made some very foul-smelling smoke, undoubtedly toxic. (Fittingly, my ex-wife had shown up and was laughing heartily.) Ah ha. I remembered the remaining super glue. It bonded the cord pieces nicely, although the junction was hard as a rock--too hard and too large to make the bends inside the mechanism.
The only other option was to restring the blinds completely, which sounded about as attractive as pulling my teeth out with the tin snips. Slowly. Without anesthetic. I simply dropped the blinds down, letting the string disappear inside, never to be seen again.
I am still alive and have new blinds! If you drive by my house and wonder why the shades never seem to come up, now you know why. Next week, the living-room blinds! |
