New Thing #290--The Fix

Each of the bedrooms in the front of my house have two windows. A while back I noticed that the blind on one of the windows wouldn't raise anymore. A closer look showed me what the problem was: the cord on the blind was broken at the top.

I didn't really want to buy a new blind for several reasons. First of all, it would need to be be a pair of blinds, because it wouldn't look right to have one new and one old one in the same room. At some point I'll have to re-do all the window coverings, but I don't want it to be right now. Second, in my experience the new blind wouldn't fit in the old brackets, so my simple activity would turn into a big project. And most importantly, I also wanted to see if I could fix the old one. Today I restrung a broken window blind.

I've shortened blinds before, and replaced broken slats, but I've never tackled a job this complex. I found a Website that gave me easy-to-follow directions for restringing. Basically, there are two pieces of cord, one on each side of the blind. The left-hand piece goes through the slats, over the top to a pulley, through the pulley, and hangs loose to make one half of the lift cord. The right-hand side goes through the slats, through the pulley and hangs down to make the other side of the lift cord.

I went to the fabric store to buy what I needed for the job. The new cord was cheap; it cost a little bit more than three dollars. Once I started the task, it went quickly. I pulled out the old cord and started weaving the new through the slats. The hardest part was threading the end through the little holes on top of the blind, but after I wrapped it with scotch tape to make it stiffer, it went right through.

I also did some maintenance while things was disassembled. The blind was too long for the window, so I took the opportunity to shorten it. I even replaced a couple of broken slats as I went along, using the ones I removed from the bottom.

When I finished, I stood back to admire my work. It's not often I get the satisfaction of fixing something that's broken.