The venetian blind on Riley’s bedroom window has had one broken slat for a while now. I decided I could replace the broken one with another from the bottom of the blind, where they’re all stacked up anyway because the blind is longer than the window is tall. This way we shouldn’t lose any of our security deposit over the broken slat.
The blind is designed in such a way that in order to free the necessary slats from the cords that hold them in, you have to feed the cord ends through from not the bottom of the blind, but the ends where you pull on them to raise and lower it. This blind is about six feet long, and has three such cords.
So here’s the pearl of wisdom in this otherwise inane entry. If you ever find yourself attempting this, and if the blind has a similar design, do yourself a favor and tie some string or something to the end of each cord first. Pull the cord through, and the string after it, all the way you need to pull it, then untie the string and do what you need to do. Then when you have to feed the cord back through, you can just tie it to the string again, and use the string to pull it back through the way it came. Rather than having to spend insane amounts of time feeding the end of the cord back through all its little passageways by hand, ahem.
All of which is complicated by the fact that I have to squeeze my arm under the edge of a semicircular wooden shade thing that covers the top of the blind’s mounting bracket, and which prevents me from seeing what I’m doing very well. But it actually wasn’t so bad, once I got inspired to braid the end of the cord with two twist-ties to help keep it straight when feeding it through the various brackets it had to pass underneath. Felt very MacGyver about that. I’m about 90% finished, I just have to feed the final cord back through two little passageways and tie the end knob back onto it. Should be able to finish that tomorrow.
And it’s crazy how hot Riley’s bedroom gets in the afternoon. He’s always been a sweaty napper, but man, anybody would be in there.
Kevin is a sweaty sleeper too. I’ll go into his room in the middle of winter and he’s drenched in sweat. It doesn’t help that he’s like his mom and likes his blankets.
now I know
What, no careful line drawing of the correct procedure?
One day I’ll come back and add them in. Or maybe a Flash movie.
Hah! Thanks for the tip, bro. I’ll have to remember that. Sounds like you’ve been having a blast so far this weekend.