Sunday, April 28, 2013

DIY roller shades, take 1.

The rugrats and I hit up the fabric store today, this was their first time there...they were impressed LOL. Everyone loved all the colors and fabrics, the other customers around us found the kids exclamations quite humorous.
We had a little trouble finding fabric that was wide enough to cover their windows without having to piece it together...which would suck. So we ended up settling a bit on what we picked...but hopefully it will still look nice. I am so glad Jericho is too young to really care what goes in the room he and Xander will share, the girls were total PITA's to get to agree on one fabric Hahaha.
Heading to pick up Dad and do a little more shopping.


At our next stop we had our first getting paged by the store incident. I had Lily with me looking at clothes for our trip, Jason walked off with the other three kids. About 10 min later I hear over the intercom "We have a lost Mommy, Katrina can you come meet your daughter at the fitting rooms." I get there just as Jason did. We have never had anyone wander off on us before, I was pretty ticked at Jason for not keeping track of her, and pretty ticked at Hayden for wandering off in the first place...she knows better. She was kind of upset though so I kept the reprimand for leaving us short, and then told her that she did the right thing. Another parenting milestone...lose your kid at the store, check. Good news is I don't think she will wander off again.

When we got home I tried my hand at this DIY roller shade thing. I bought the cut to size shade at Home Depot for like $20, I got some spray fabric glue and fabric...you will also need to purchase the brackets to hang the shade.

One thing I learned from this first attempt...I think this is a two person job. I had a heck of a time keeping my fabric and shade flat and wrinkle free. Next time I will get Jason to help and hopefully it will go better.

So I cut my shade to fit the window, then I cut the fabric to fit the shade...leaving an inch or so around all the edges, that is what you fold over the back and glue down. You don't want to use a fabric that is too thick. I placed the fabric right side down on the floor, then rolled the shade out..right side down again, on top of it, glue the edges (not sure if I love the spray glue...kinda messy, regular fabric glue in a bottle or hot fabric glue sticks may be better) then fold the edges over the back of the shade. Let dry. Roll your shade up and that's it!
See what I mean about all the wrinkles, I think 2 people could have done a better job. Thankfully you can't really tell from the other side...and I'm sure the boys will break this one in no time so I will get to do it again LOL.
While I was inside using the messy glue and taking up the whole floor my funny bunch were outside.

They were still in undies after trying on their new clothes when we got home...good thing it was a nice warm day today Hehehe.

Xan, that totally completes the look :)





All done...I think I should have ironed the fabric first LOL. Hopefully in time it will work itself out.

Make sure you get the correct brackets, we got the wrong ones first so the shade wouldn't roll up. Once we got the correct ones the shade worked fine.


2 comments:

boomerkae said...

Very cool. I'll have to remember this. Is there a pin on one of your boards???

TripMomma said...

Yes, there are a couple different options pinned to my 'Window' board :)