long entry- window shade HELL

Here is a glimpse into our lives.

Ahem.

Hubby and I are seriously wanting one-cell, pleated shades for our house. They save energy, and can be put under nice curtains that I will get someday. Anyhow, I've done research all overthe internet and locally, and priced everything. Hubby decided that he wanted to buy the shades at the hardware store and put them in ourselves. I mentioned that possibility last week to two individuals who told me not to do it.

Well, here goes.

We go to the hardware store to "order" shades. We end up wanting to buy them. Hubby convinces me that "we should just TRY to put them in ourselves and see how hard it is." So, they didn't have the kind we wanted at that store (foil lined, for complete room darkness). We went to the other store, which had them. I had the window measurements in my pocket, and we were pleasantly surprised that we didn't have to cut the shades to size for our bedroom window. We bought one to try to put up in our bedroom only, and if it works out, we'll buy more.

We got it home. We discovered that our measurements were off. The shade did NOT fit the window, and the shade needed to be cut. Hubby (that cheap bastard), made me go back to the store and have the shade cut. I did. He said he couldn't go because he wanted to put the brackets into the walls to be ready for the shade when it got home. I went to the store and had the shade cut to size. When I got home he was watching TV- I had the directions with me in the box.

We couldn't find a pencil to mark where the brackets were supposed to go on the window. Hubby used a permanent marker until I complained- then we switched to the closest thing we had to a pencil- my lipliner.

WITHOUT LOOKING AT THE DIRECTIONS hubby put in one bracket- having me hold it while he used the power screwdriver (screwdriver is 5 years old and this was it's 1st use). Hubby didn't have a drill to drill holes for the screws ahead of time, so he pounded nails in and then pulled them out with the hammer, leaving holes for the screws.

He kept hollering at me to bring him this or that, and then hollering at me to hold the bracket in place while he screwed the "damn thing" in. I finally brought his tools in the room with us because I was tired of running back and forth. He got the bracket screwed in. Upside down. He removed one screw. The other one was stripped. He (and I) tugged, yanked, and did everything we could to unscrew that damn screw, so that we could put the bracket in correctly. It took 15 minutes, but we got it out. We re-marked the wall with my lipliner and screwed the bracket in correctly. We then did the other two brackets. We snapped the shade in place. The string wouldn't work. So, we had to take the shade off and play with the part where the string goes into the shade. That part broke while we were trying to "fix" it. We replaced the shade in the window, forlorn. In our bedroom window we now have a shade that does not work correctly. 2 hours of work. The bottome line is, hubby us convinced that we will do better "on the next one". If you pray, pray for us :-)

Previous ... Next
� mbwillow on
2003-04-01 at 11:34 a.m.
comment