Blinds - Shortening and Lengthening - Part 1

Princess Two's room has had three sets of vinyl blinds over the past few years. It had vertical blinds when we bought the house. I never really liked them so I purchased some white vinyl blinds and they turned red and melted with the blanket and pillows that sat on the bed as they got tossed against the window at times.


I replaced the blinds and it happened again as you can see the warped and stained blinds in the top picture. The furnace vent is under the bed there and the sun hits that window all day. I guess they get hot when there is a pillow against that window. 

Since this last time, I have made sure that nothing ever gets in front of that window anymore. 

I was at a second hand store and I saw that they had two sets of tan blinds and when I measured them, they were the exact size to fit my window length wise. They looked long enough at a glace but when I arrived home, I found that they were too short in one window and too long in the other window for which I purchased them.

You can see that the amount it is too short is about the same distance that it is too long in the other window, so I had a thought. That, I could add the extra length from one blind to the short blind in the other window. 

I counted how many slats I needed to take out to make the long blind fit in the shorter window and it was at 8 slats. So, I counted up 8 slats and cut it just below the holding string for the 8th slot from the bottom as you can see here. I took the slat out from that slot so that I could replace it with the bottom wooden piece of the blinds.

I then took the plastic plugs out of the bottom of the bottom of the blinds and undid the knot at the bottom of the cord and slid the plastic off the bottom of the blind pull cords. I cut the three pull cords at the same place on the blinds as where I cut off the bottom eight slats. 

I pulled out the bottom thicker piece and slid it through the bottom slat holder that was now the bottom of the shorter blind. 

Once it was through the holders, I threaded the pull cords through the end and center holes and slipped the cords through the plastic plugs from the bottom of the blinds and tied a knot in each to hold it on. I then used the five plugs to hold the edges of the cut off bottom into the holes and made sure they were all hanging evenly as I plugged it back up as you can see in the pictures.
 
You can see the extra eight slats here with the cording I cut off.  I will show you tomorrow how I put the cut off part on the shorter blinds. I think it was ingenious if I do say so myself. I wasn't sure it was going to work but I think you will see it worked just fine and saved me some money on new blinds. 

I purchased two sets of this exact color and size for two of my upstairs windows and it was just over $100 for the blinds new. I got two windows with the tan blinds for $16 this week. Can't be sad about that. It did take me the length of a movie to cut off and attach the blinds but I watched a show with the kids and did it at the same time so it wasn't a big sacrifice...  to be continued.