The Cherry On Top

The sheer curtains I hung in the windows when I moved in were always meant to be temporary. I had no idea they’d hang for two years, but with the house painted, landscape in, it was time for to address the window coverings. I turned to Google and played around on several sites, leaving contact me info. The only one to reach back to me was Budget Blinds; Missy Weinheimer. She was super responsive even after months went by after our initial contact. I grew up in a house with mini Levelor blinds at the windows and vertical blinds at the patio door. Because of that I was fixated on doing something different in my first house; specifically I was leaning towards Roman blinds.

The inspiration for my house interior design was the 2017 HGTV Urban Oasis giveaway house.  I was pulling pics to prepare for my final post on that house when I noticed that the kitchen had blue gingham roman blinds at the windows.  I had used blue gingham contact paper to line the shelves of my built-in, so I definitely wanted those for my windows.  I emailed Missy the picture and she got back to me in less than 48-hours with a very expensive option.  Of all her vendors only one carried that fabric and it was a vendor she called the Lexus of roman blind manufacturers.  I was looking at $1200 for just those two windows, so that idea went bye, bye.  I scheduled an appointment with Missy to come out on September 11 to show me other options.

Missy spent over two hours with me.  Prior to arriving she had spent time on my blog.  She had a great feel for my house before walking through the door, but she remembered our initial conversation and my desire to do something different than blinds.  Missy made five trips out to her van bringing in fabric books, different shade samples.   At my request she held samples in my window so I could go outside to see what would great people. I wasn’t feeling any of it.  I guess I really didn’t know what a roman shade was or how it operated.  In the price range of my budget the backs of them look terrible in the window as you see all the mechanisms that make them function.

Missy never grew impatient with my lack of decisiveness. She even pushed back her next appointment.  On her last trip to her van she came back with a sample of faux wood blinds with tapes.  That was it!  I didn’t understand what a tape was until she showed it to me, but the width of the slats, the valance on top, and the tapes combined was exactly what my house and windows needed to stay true to my restoration journey.  The variety of colors was awesome.  I was able to match the blinds and tapes to the wood tones of my existing moulding.  I was able to select two different shades of white to match the two different whites I used upstairs and down.  Most importantly she assured me she could mount the blinds inside the moulding.  After months of restoring that wood I was not anxious to see screw holes go back in them.

Installation was scheduled for October 14, but FedEx shipping delays due to the California fires pushed it back another week to October 21. Missy’s son Alex is her installer and typically she lets him work on his own, but she fell in love with my house and wanted to be on hand and help with the install. They worked well together. She placed each blind and its related hardware at each window and Alex handled the mounting. He had to trim each valance as Missy intentionally gave some extra margin. Better too long than too short. They arrived at 10a and had all 21 windows done by 1:30p.

I didn’t think the blinds would have the impact that they did once I saw them installed. My house truly looks complete; they are the cherry on top of what has been a miraculous journey to restore my 1924 Cape Cod styled home. My restoration work is finished. It is home maintenance from this point forward. I held another Open House on October 24. Despite the alarming news coverage of the growing spread of Covid-19 about 30 friends, colleagues, clients, and family came through. No pics, but I’ll have a final post on this journey out shortly.