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lisainpa

New House - 18 Windows - advice?

LisaInPA
10 years ago

Hello! I'm new to posting here, but have been getting so much great advice from reading the forum. We close on our newly built house in early February, and it comes with no window blinds. The windows are "3050" windows, with one 60" wide window in the breakfast area, and from measuring the clearance inside, the width is 34-1/8". With everything else we are buying, we don't have the budget to hire a specialty shop to install custom blinds, so I will need to order them ready made. Any advice on the best resources (quality+price) to keep it under $75 or so per window? I was going to go to Lowes or Home Depot, but if there is a good online source, we could go that way too. I'm assuming I'd order the 34" blinds?

Comments (6)

  • joaniepoanie
    10 years ago

    You could try Ikea..they might be cheaper than Lowes/HD. I think the online stores are "custom" in that you give exact measurements for each window as opposed to ordering standard sizes. I was very pleased with Blindsgalore.com.

    If you're not sure if you want the same treatment on every window, you could always use temporary shades you tape up from Lowes/HD....I had one of these on a window at work for years with no problems.

  • graywings123
    10 years ago

    When I was moving into a new house, I dealt with the windows that needed to be covered from day one. I taped wax paper on the bathroom windows - that was enough to give privacy until I had time to decide what I wanted there. For other windows, I bought pressure rods and very inexpensive sheers that also went up up on Day 1.

    That gave us time to live in the house and decide what rooms needed light control and privacy.

    When I was ready to buy permanent blinds, I took my measurements and decided what I wanted in a room. Then I made a list of the on-line retailers and price shopped among them - justblinds.com, blindsgalore.com, and a few others I found by googling.

  • Annie Deighnaugh
    10 years ago

    I agree with the others...do a temporary and very inexpensive solution until you really know what you want, then do it right. If you do it too well now, you won't have the incentive to change it and you'll be stuck with something mediocre for a long time...the inexpensive solution will help keep you motivated to doing it right.

    If it's privacy and light control you want, you can always do what mother did as a temporary solution. She got tension rods and clip rings and then bought bath towels and hung them in the window. When you replace them with a real window treatment, you can still use the towels....

    I agree you can find inexpensive window treatments at ikea too.

  • ineffablespace
    10 years ago

    When we rented an apartment temporarily it had huge windows that faced a public courtyard and a bedroom window four feet across from someone's kitchen.

    We bought spring rods and white panels (Jane's Plain and Simple from Country Curtains, that are white cotton and light but not quite semi sheer), and some white block out curtains for the window in the bedroom. The plain white cotton panels come in a lot of sizes.

    It was worth the investment even temporarily and we have used them in the new house for the time being.

    If you need light control on the bedrooms I would probably get decent fitted roller shades and do something on tension rods wherever else you need something

  • Sujafr
    10 years ago

    While disposable ones are helpful, they end up being a fairly good chunk of change by the time you do that many windows. I've used them temporarily, but after doing window treatments in multiple homes now have decided that you might as well just put that toward either faux wood blinds or bamboo shades cut-to-fit at Lowes or HD if you need privacy right away. Lowes had the best for what I wanted for instant privacy. You can have them done immediately and take them home. They look good enough to use indefinitely and are easy on the budget. Here's a sample of their lined bamboo shades purchased about 18 mos ago. You can shorten them yourself if you have a hot glue gun and any amount of DIY skills. They are only bottom-up raising though--NOT top-down/bottom-up if that's something you want.

    Their white faux wood blinds work well, too. Again, they cut them to fit right there and then you can shorten them yourself.
    It's hard to tell the difference between them and others I've ordered custom in the past. They've held up well so far.

    This post was edited by sujafr on Thu, Jan 16, 14 at 15:26

  • LisaInPA
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    Thank you all for the great suggestions! I really like those Bamboo shades - they might work permanently in my family room. I have five pairs of 63 inch sheers in my current townhouse that would work great temporarily on tension rods. So I think I'll go ahead and do that in the downstairs windows until I figure out what we are going to do permanently. The ceilings on the first floor are 9 feet high so I'll need longer curtains, etc that are harder to find. I've already bought some inexpensive 84" sheers for the bedrooms upstairs and we know we want white 2' blinds there, so I'll focus on that for now and really consider carefully what I want in the rooms downstairs.

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