Ummmm, it’s been a while since we got these shades, so maybe I should blog about it?

If you don’t remember, we have a long string of windows along the back of our house

I LOVE these windows. It was a huge draw when we first saw the those. It’s amazing that there is so much privacy because living within the city limits of a major city and to literally have no neighbors in the back of your house that can see you is a luxury that we know we’re lucky to have. And that view is awesome

But the sun in the morning is blinding. It’s not absolutely terrible now with the long days (the sun has risen by the time we’re all hanging out in here), but come winter with later morning sunrises, that sunshine is BRIGHT.

We thought a lot about what kinds of shades we wanted on the windows. We did a few Roman shades at Picardy, but we actually weren’t super into them by the time we left. Chris and I are a little lazy when it comes to shades: I want them open or closed, I don’t want to have to fuck with them. I know that sounds really lazy – but I didn’t like that I needed to supervise the Roman shade going up – I always had to make sure it was folding properly as I was raising it and fold and tuck along as it went. Our goal with these windows is to make them AS EASY AS POSSIBLE TO OPEN AND CLOSE. We’ll want to be able to really take advantage of the view and privacy as much as possible. But we also want to easily block out that rising sun if need be. And also, there’s a window in the dining area that faces the TV and during the day the glare is so bad you basically cannot see the TV. That window shade we figure will be down most of the time.

All together there were 10 windows that needed shades: 2 in the dining area, 3 along the wall in the living room at the back of the house, 3 along the wall in the living room at the front of the house and 2 more in the hallway. Certainly we didn’t have to do all these windows at once, but we wanted them to all look the same and sometimes products, patterns or colors get discontinued, so we figured it would be a smart decision to get them all at the same time.

We thought about a lot of options – making curtains ourselves, getting fabric shades custom made with fabric of our choice, or getting shades from some big box place. We weighed our preferences and our budget and settled on roller shades from a big box. First we went to HD, but compared their prices to Blinds.com (no sponsorship, just full disclosure) and found them to almost be 2/3 of the price for the identical product. Yes please I’ll save money.

First up was that we ordered free samples of the fabric we were interested in (it’s been a while since we did this, but I think you got up to 10 for free)

I had thought I’d like white, but I picked a couple dark ones to switch things up and some that I thought had texture to them but instead they were just an awful print. I didn’t like a lot of the whites because they felt plastic-y. And surprisingly Chris and I were both drawn to some of the darker ones. In the end, this was our panel of finalists

I was a little intimidated to pick something so out of my comfort zone by going with the dark one that we both liked the best: I always like white blinds. So obviously I went to Pinterest

from here

I actually liked the lighter walls with the darker shades a lot, so Chris and i went for it: Signature Blackout Rocklin Pewter it was!

The next step was measuring all 10 windows and then placing our order. It took about 2 weeks for the shades to come and they were actually a little bit more difficult to install than I thought they’d be

There was some swearing involved. But eventually we got them all installed with the exception of one that we slightly miss measured. The good news with Blinds.com is that you’re permitted to remeasure and reorder blinds at no cost (up to a certain amount of times) if you made the same bozo mistake like we did ? So we measured again, ordered again, waited again. And then they came! We got that last one in pretty easily, and with that all our windows were covered

I am happy to report that the shades are awesome. I love how easily they open and close. And we do open and close then frequently. The good news is that we still leave them open most of the time, but when it’s BRIGHT sunlight, it’s nice that they’re easily pulled down a bit.

I’m also very happy with the color of the shade. I was nervous to go so dark, but it’s a nice difference – a jump from what I’d normally pick for myself and I’m happy with the choice. We both don’t like that you can see the roller mechanism, but buying the valance with the window tacked on a hefty price, so we decided we’d build our own valances later.

All in all it was money we didn’t intend on spending so early, but I think it was well spent. We bought all the shades while they were having a sale and all 10 clocked in at about $1,000. Not a small amount of money, but honestly not terrible for 10 windows, 5 of which are 6+ feet tall and two of which are also about 6 feet wide.