Roller Blinds

At the end of 2015, I made a plan - it had a bunch of house projects on it, and they were grouped together into months. The idea was to complete each project in its appropriate month. I even gave some projects multiple months, because I knew I was under-estimating the time it would take to finish them.

Well, I'm done with January's projects (soft-close drawers and cabinets / king bed headboard) and February's projects, which I'm going to tell you about today. But March? April? Nope. May/June? Started on it. July? Half done! August? Not even on my radar anymore. September/October? Maybe one part out of five. November/December? Not likely.

Of course, I got a whole bunch of other side projects done. Like car stuff, the loft bed, picture frames, the sewing table, toilet fixed, kid book shelves...pretty much everything else that I've posted about on here. Oh well.

Anyway, so ever since I saw The Holiday, I have wanted motorized blackout roller blinds. You know, from this part:

Now, I didn't go that far - no motorized blinds (I looked into it, and it'll happen someday). However, I did install custom blackout roller shades. "But Adam, aren't those expensive if you buy them custom?" you ask. They sure are, if you buy them! But I made them! "Wouldn't it have been easier and taken far less time and effort if you bought them, though?" Stop asking silly questions.

Anyway, on to the windows. Kristen and I like it dark when we sleep. It also helps when Kristen gets migraines to be in a super dark area. So what I did was make roller blinds that would fit our bathroom window and our sliding glass door (the two areas that let in light to our room). Then I did the same to our spare room and the girls' bedroom upstairs. I left them off of the office window (fourth bedroom).

To start, I did a ton of research. The key components to a good roller blind are:
1. Tube: preferably aluminum, which is expensive, so I ended up going with PVC) - I bought this at Lowe's

I used PVC pipe for the roller blind - you can use any
diameter you want, as long as it fits your clutch hardware.

2. Roller blind clutch and attachment hardware: this is the part that is inserted into the tube on either end and has the string that lets you pull it up and down - I bought this online from China for less than $2/set

Clutch hardware from China

3. Blackout fabric: not "room darkening" fabric - bought this at JoAnn's with coupons (as it can be pricey)

This is the fabric rolled out using tape to temporarily connect two pieces.
We ended up doing the sliding doors as two separate roller blinds.

4. Channel: this is for the blind to roll down in, to block out light at the edges - I accomplished this with vinyl "J channel" and T channel (used for tile floors), epoxied to the old PVC vertical blinds I took from the sliding glass door area, cut to fit the windows

Channel is the key to a dark room, and is the trickiest part.

I'll spare you most of the details, but I cut the tubing, mounted the hardware, had to jury rig the clutches to fit (dang mm-to-in conversions), experimented with making and mounting the channel, had to drill out a rusted bolt from my sliding glass door so the handle wouldn't obstruct the blinds, be super careful about cutting the fabric, and deal with all kinds of other complications. But...I finally got them up and they work great.

Pre-channel mount in the bedroom

Final blinds with curtains as well

Now, I'm fully aware that my solution isn't perfect - it doesn't completely block out all the light, and it's not nearly as pretty as the professional ones. But it still works pretty good, and I did it for a small fraction of the cost of the custom blinds I will someday have in a future house.

This is the brightest time of day, without the curtains too