Not to Worry

DIY tasks do not come simpler than hanging roller blinds: there could not be an easier job for a lazy Sunday morning…

…Step one: go online and find the fitting instructions.  Gone are the days of finding a small piece of multi-lingually printed paper in the box.  Today, things are much more efficient and feature nothing more than a four-hour online search to find the customised manufacturer’s instructions for fitting your blind which, on closer inspection, turn out to be a wiring diagram for a foot-spa… in Portuguese. 

Step two, turn to Youtube tutorial and spend several hours distracted by surfboarding cats…

Open first box to find that blind has left handed control and right handed brackets.  Youtube says that this is normal and easily remedied.  It is 50% correct.  It is definitely normal for things to be wrong.  No to worry, correction takes little more than thirty minutes – six hours if you include the trip to A&E – and is barely noticeable if you do not look.  Once done, it is but the work of a moment to reverse all of the remaining instructions in your head… or some of them.  There is always one that slips through.  It is referred to on the instruction video as ‘the one measurement you must not get wrong.’  Not to worry, correcting the error will take no more than three days for a competent builder.

According to the online tutorial the brackets can be fitted to the window itself (they can’t – it has decorative mouldings) to the sides of the recess (they can’t – the holes are far too close to the corner to get the drill in) or to the top of the recess (which consists of a single layer of plasterboard, the depth of which is considerably less than either screw or wallplug).  The only practical option appears to be to shorten both plug and screw, hang the blind on the top and wait for it to fall down.  Looking at it now, I don’t think it will take long.

Still, not to worry…

I have shelves in this house that I would never walk under – even though they do not have a chain on them that I have to pull every day and they do not hang perilously from screws that will not tighten in plugs that just spin within the decaying plasterboard drillholes.  I’m sure that somebody must know how to properly hang blinds, but they’ve never been able to show me.  The manufacturer’s website tells me (and I can do little but agree with it) that, if unsure, I should have opted for the ‘no-drill blinds’.  When these that I do have (which they were quite happy to sell me) begin to slacken I will employ my own ‘six inch masonry nail’ hanging method – just as soon as someone can show me how to get the bloody things through the lintels.

I am calm nonetheless: they are only window blinds.  I choose not to worry about them.  I have so much more to trouble me.  I could fret about the kitchen light that has taken to flickering each time it is turned on and the tap that drips like… well, a dripping tap if I’m honest.  There is more than enough to worry about in this house, but I refuse to let it get me down.  Most of it is in the kitchen and the builders are about to beat the shit out of that.  It deserves it.

When DIY first raises its ugly head, it is usually ‘man versus house’, but once the job has begun it becomes ‘man versus a whole range of sharp, pointy and electrified implements of self harm’.  Raising the garage door is like throwing open the portal to a mediaeval torture chamber: there is not a single implement in there that I have not, at some time or another, impaled myself upon.  I look at my little plastic box of electrical gewgaws and reflect upon the fact that I have electrocuted myself so many times I find it difficult to believe that I have not yet developed superpowers.

My dad always told me that you are less likely to cut yourself with sharp tools.  I once had chisels that, at worst, would give you a nasty bruise.  I sharpened them (thanks dad!) and now they are more than capable of turning me into walking Carpaccio.   I have sawed (sawn?) ragged gouges into my flesh more often than I would care to mention and I have even managed to drive a screwdriver right through my hand – in almost exactly the same place as I previously pierced myself with an electric drill.  I steadfastly refuse to change the blade in my Stanley knife because, frankly, as things stand there is more chance of accidentally cutting myself with the handle.

As I write this – and against all expectations – the blinds remain exactly where I left them, although to date, no-one has dared to tug on the little chain that unrolls them, and my daughter has just reported that two of her own blinds, fitted by their previous occupant, have fallen down overnight.  I told her not to worry, I’ve got boxes full of six inch masonry nails in the garage.  She laughed.  She is a much more accomplished DIY’er than myself – and besides, she has just bought a new tube of Superglue…

Envoi: they were, my wife assures me, actually fitted back to front, so I turned them around and all is well – except that in order to make the ‘blackout blinds’ accord with the Trades descriptions Act, I now have to fix them to the window frame with gaffer tape.  Still, not to worry…