Don't Be Afraid to Take Down Your Vertical Blinds. We Did.

Vertical blinds. I was not aware of my hatred of them until we moved into our house last July. Not only do I think they are ugly, but these particularly blinds would stick when I'd try to open them, so they were annoying too. We live on base housing so we are technically renters but I didn't see why I had to put up with those blinds for the rest of our time here. 

Before I show you our new curtains, can I tell you a funny story? Our backyard backs right into the backyard of neighbors behind us. There's a little slope between us so despite a fence, they see right into our house (and we see right into their kitchen). Our house is also a duplex so we share a wall with a single guy living right next to us. 

One day while Chris was deployed, a friend and neighbor was at the park and mentioned to the neighbor behind us that I was doing some babysitting and they should call me. (I've never met this backyard neighbor). So, BackYardNeighbor says to FriendNeighbor, "Is she the one that runs around naked in her backyard with a guy??" 

SAY WHAAAT?? 

FriendNeighbor was quick to defend my character and assured BackyardNeighbor that despite being the artist type, I was not the type to run around naked in my yard. Plus, my husband was away and I was definitely not the type to have another man in the house. 

Since DuplexNeighbor is a single guy and often has ladies over the house, we could only deduce that he and a lady friend were for some reason, outside their house without clothing when this BackYard Neighbor saw them. 

I never got a call for babysitting. 

Thus explains our need for the blinds--obviously our neighbors have a good view of our house. 

So, I came up with a solution for keep our privacy and beautify the windows as well. 

My before picture is real bad. Sorry. Here are the blinds. They were hung on a track rod thing right above the window. I thought about figuring a way to hang the curtains without taking down the blinds, but that didn't make sense. So, we took them down. It was hung just like a curtain rod. I figured out that the individual blinds just popped out of the track system, so I took them all down. Then I unscrewed the rod from the wall. 

We put the track system and pile of blinds behind our couch so they'd be readily accessible to re-hang when we move out. 

And then we hung the curtain rod using the same holes that the track system was on. We actually used two curtain rods. Chris figured out how to connect two rods together so they ran all the way across the sliding glass door and the window that is strangely close to the door. His solution involved some cutting of the rod, but I was doing other things so I don't really know what he did. Bad blogger.

The curtains are RITVA curtains from our IKEA trip in August. 19.99 per pair and they are really good quality in my opinion. They have almost a linen like texture to them and let in just the right amount of light. We hung three panels. At night, we slide the curtains closed. We've tested them from our backyard to make sure you can't see in. So I can dance around in my underwear all I want. 

Eventually I'll get around to hemming them.

The curtain rods were $11.99 each at Ross. Much better than similar ones at other stores for $20-$30. And I like that they had simple finials instead of weird swirly stuff. 

The End. Problem solved. 

Do you have vertical blinds? Take them down! Put up curtains! Let's start a revolution!