I ordered new roman shades for our kitchen last weekend and we spent yesterday afternoon putting them up.  The roman shades I ordered were the Cape Cod shades from JCPenney in the Golden Oak color.  Because we were concerned about keeping the appearance consistent between these shades and others on the front of our house, I also ordered privacy liners from Target.

The privacy liner is velcroed to the top of the shade

Installing the privacy liners on the back of the roman shades was the first thing we did yesterday.  It was pretty simple.  We laid the shades out on the floor with the back facing up and then placed the liner over the top of the shade so that it was positioned how we’d want it when it was attached.  The liners are just a white sheet of fabric with battons at various intervals down the length.  Based on some feedback I’d read on the Target website and a comment in the instructions that came with them, I decided to iron them before attaching them to the shade to give them a less wrinkled appearance from the outside.  The liners are then attached to the back of the roman shade with velcro at the top of the shade and some plastic clips along the length of the shade.  The instructions said to attach the velcro to the top of the

Plastic clips attach the liner to the shade.

back of the shade and then secure it with some tacks that were provided.  Our shade didn’t have a good place to attach the velcro on the back of the shade, so we opted to attach it to the top of the headrail instead.  We also decided not to tack the velcro in because positioning it on the headrail seemed like it would keep the liner in place just fine.  The rest of the liner then attached to the shades with the plastic clips provided, which clipped the liner to the strings on the back of the shade at various intervals.  It only took about 5 minutes a shade to install the liner and I think it was worth it.  They look about like white sheets from the outside, but they do make the window treatments look more neutral, so I think it was worth it to put them up – I think we’d notice seeing the wooden color from outside a lot more and not like it.

The kitchen windows with privacy liners on the shades.

The mounting brackets for the roman shades.

Installation of the shades wasn’t too bad either.  We did an outside mount, but wound up not mounting the shades too much higher than the windows.  I was initially concerned about the fact that the shades were a standard 72″ long while our windows are only 53″ long, but it turns out that it looks pretty natural for roman shades to not be lowered completely, so we decided just to go with it and not try to shorten them or mount them higher to compensate.  The blinds are hung with two brackets that mount into the window trim and provide bolts for the shade to be secured to using a wing nut.  The brackets and nuts provide some room for adjustments as far as centering the shade on the window and even straightening it a little.  Overall, installation of the blinds was pretty easy.  It took longer than we thought it should (as always), but there wasn’t anything difficult about it.

The new kitchen shades!

As part of the installation, we had to remove the curtain we’d had up in the kitchen before because the supports for the curtain rod were in the way of where the blinds needed to be mounted, so they haven’t gone back up yet.  I think we still need a valance of some type, but I’m planning to get another curtain rod that can be mounted a little higher (probably above the windows) so it won’t be in the way of the shades.  I need to find something that has enough clearance for the blinds to be underneath the valance and not interfere with it.  We’re also limited because the windows are right up next to the corner of the room and most of the curtain rods that are long enough to span all three windows have pretty big finials on each end that won’t fit.  I found these on the Lowe’s website that I kind of like, but there’s not much information posted about them, so I need to go to the store to see if I can figure out how big the finials actually are and how much clearance the curtain rod will give for the blinds:

New curtain rod for the kitchen valance?

I’d really like to replace the hardware on our kitchen cabinets with something a little less gold, but we took one of the handles off tonight and discovered that the door and drawer fronts are discolored where the metal plate had been behind the handles.  I’d really like to not have to use backplates with the new hardware, but I’m afraid it will look worse to see the discoloration behind the handles if we don’t put new ones on.

Anyone have any thoughts on how to make it not as noticeable without having to refinish the cabinets?

I finally broke down yesterday and placed an order for shades for a few rooms in the house.  Now that it’s getting dark earlier, I’m starting to feel more self conscious about the fact that we have nothing in the way of our neighbors watching us eat dinner at the kitchen table every night.  So, I decided it was time to finally order some blinds for the windows in our kitchen and laundry room (which have been blind-less since we moved in last fall) and a replacement blind for the bathroom in our attic, which has had a lacy see-through shade until now.

For the kitchen windows, I decided on the Cape Code roman shades from JCPenney, in the Golden Oak color.  I ordered a standard size (since custom is so much more expensive) and I’m planning to do an outside mount with them so I’ll have a little more flexibility about how high they’re mounted.  The windows are only 57″ tall, but the standard length for the blinds was 72″, so I’m not sure if it will look weird to have the extra material at the bottom or not.  It doesn’t sound like they come with instructions for shortening the blinds, but I looked at them in the store for a while and I think it wouldn’t be too hard to do if I needed to.  Because the rest of our shades look white from the outside, I also ordered some white privacy liners for roman shades from Target.  They come in the same size as the blinds and it sounds like they clip on the back pretty easily.  I’m not really concerned about privacy since it seems like the blinds are woven pretty tightly, so all I’m looking for is just a uniform appearance from the front of the house.  Hopefully they’ll do the trick.

For the second floor laundry room, I wound up having to order some custom shades because the window sizes are so non-standard, but there were only two windows, so it wasn’t too pricey.  For that room I ordered 1″ Levalor Mark I cordless aluminum mini blinds to match the ones in the front bedroom just opposite it.  The blinds that we already have in the bedroom were installed by the previous owner, so I took a one of them down yesterday to get the color and style from the sticker inside the head rail of the blind.  The color we ordered is called “White Cap” and it’s a slightly creamier color than the standard shade of white, so it matches the trim a little better.  I just hope they haven’t changed the color over the last few years or we could be in for a surprise!

We also ordered a single 1″ Natural Basswood wooden blind from JCPenney (like the ones in the picture, except for in white) for the bathroom on the third floor.  We have one of these in a bathroom on the main floor and we like it a lot for a bathroom, so we thought we’d stick with something we already know we like.  We were able to order a standard size for this one too and, since shortening mini blinds is fairly standard, I’m pretty sure it’ll work out ok for the bathroom.

Anyway, in the next week or so, we should have lots of blinds arriving in the mail.  I’m so excited to finally get some window treatments up and have some privacy from the neighbors!

After all the frustrations of dealing with a tarp cover for the pool last winter, we decided it was time to try something different.  This summer, we researched and ordered a new mesh safety cover for the pool.  We’ve only had it for a few weeks, but so far, it’s a big improvement over what we were dealing with last year.  It also looks a lot cleaner … here are pictures of the old tarp cover and the new mesh cover:

The old tarp cover

The new mesh cover

One of the things we like a lot better about this cover is the fact that it’s a safety cover that’s anchored into the concrete all around the edges of the pool.  We like the piece of mind knowing that the cover would support the weight of anything that might otherwise accidentally fall into the pool.  The cover seems pretty sturdy, but we’ve already noticed a lot of muddy footprints on it, which makes us sort of nervous that the raccoons will attempt to do the same thing to it that they did to the water bags last fall.  So far, so good, though.

Each of the straps that connects the cover to the anchors in the concrete has a spring attached to it, so the cover will have a little give as the snow starts to pile on it this winter.  Right now, we’ve got the cover on pretty loosely, but the recommendation is to put it on so that the springs aren’t more than half-way compressed when there’s no weight on the cover.  This will allow enough give for the cover to stretch and rest on top of the water left in the pool when there’s snow on it.

Anchors for the new cover

It’s also a mesh cover, so the water will be allowed to drain through it into the pool over the course of the winter as the snow melts or when it rains in the spring.  We’re not sure yet if this will be a good thing or not.  We think it will make opening the pool much less work because we won’t have to pump water off the top of the cover (which was the most time consuming part of opening the pool with a tarp cover), but it does mean that we need to periodically keep an eye on the water level in the pool and use a submersible pump to lower it if the level gets too high over the winter.  The guys at the pool store thought we wouldn’t have to worry about it until the middle of March or so, but we’ll probably plan to check it more frequently than that, at least to start with.  We’re also not sure what letting all of that water into the pool will do to the pool water when we open it in the spring.  The pool was pretty much clear this spring when we opened it after having a tarp cover on all winter, but letting all of that water into the pool over the course of the winter seems to almost guarantee that it will be pretty murky come spring.  Everything we’ve read says the trick is to close late and open early so that the water temperature stays at or below 60 degrees during the time that the pool is closed to prevent the algae from growing.  Guess we’ll have to wait and see how that turns out.  For now, though, it’s sure nice to not have to deal with leaking water bags!