These blinds are SERIOUSLY jacked up.
Now there's a couple of different things going on here.
First off, the apparatus that controls the wand that opens and closes the blind is broken.
Also there's a drawstring that's broken.
Now I could go and get myself some new blinds,
but I wouldn't be me if I didn't try to fix it first.
And I think I'm gonna start with the wand.
The piece for this, I could not find it in my local home improvement store,
Which for me was Home Depot.
I had to actually order the replacement piece on Amazon.
But it was only $4 or $5 for two of them, so really cheap.
Definitely a lot cheaper than replacing the blinds entirely.
You're gonna start by carefully pulling out the center bar.
Then remove the broken piece.
You're going to take the new one, pop it in there.
And slide the bar back through. Now the bar is hexagon shaped,
so it might take a little bit of jimmying to get it in there perfectly the way you want.
And the way it came out was with this little piece on this end, so I'm gonna
put it in there that way as well. I don't know if it matters,
but might as well just do it all the same.
And then we'll attach the wand to the little hook there.
Aha! Turns perfectly! Now comes the bigger issue of restringing this bad boy.
It's day 2, and yesterday I did restring these blinds, and I'm not gonna lie to ya,
It took a LONG time, probably about an hour and a half's worth of frustration.
You know the first time you do something it always takes a lot longer.
Well, I guess there's probably a few exceptions to that (drum and cymbal rimshot)
Once I got it all back together, I was really proud of myself,
and then I realized I had made one vital mistake:
The string I had used to restring it was nylon string,
and it was too slippery for the gear on the inside of the mechanism that holds it into place.
to hold it, so it just slipped right through, and I still had the same problem on my hands.
So, I gotta re-string it.
(frustrated grunt)
But the good news is that because I went through all that frustration yesterday,
I figured out a few tricks to make it a LOT easier on myself.
The first thing is that it's a lot easier to start off restringing these if they're still hanging.
And also to start from the bottom, which is the opposite of of the way I did it yesterday.
Now I've got here some cotton twine that I bummed from my Mom yesterday.
She had a big roll of it, so I didn't have to buy any, which was nice.
It's a little bit difficult to thread this twine through these little holes,
So if you happen to have a large needle with a large eye that you can thread this through, that's great.
If not, try using a toothpick. Just tape it to a toothpick, and that way you've got a way
to get that string through there a lot easier than just trying to feed it through there.
As you're weaving this through, you want to make sure that you
go on opposite sides each time of this little rung on this rope ladder here.
If you don't it's going to slide like this on you.
That last one's a little bit hard.
That was SO much easier though than trying to do it when they're laying down.
Now it's time to take them down.
This string has to go into this tiny little hole at the top of the blinds.
And on top of that hole is one of these spindles
that helps turn the blinds to open and close.
I struggled and struggled.
I frustrated the heck out of myself. I actually took my needle and bent it
slightly so that I could get around the little spindle here,
and now that I figured out how to do it, I feel like a big dumb idiot.
What you do is you take the center bar, and you slide it out of the way.
Take the spindle out.
And then you can actually feed the thread right through that hole.
Then the string needs to go right through there
Drop that back in there, slide the bar back in place.
Take your string, poke it through where the other string is,
and make sure that it comes through that opening
on the other side of those two little bars from the other drawstring.
I'm going to go ahead and put the cap back on the end of this.
And down here I'm going to cut it a nice long length from the spool so that I've got plenty to work with.
(bumps head) Oh!
(laughing)
Ow, that hurt.
It's like some sort of crazy DIY boudoir photo shoot down here.
What's the word I'm looking for? Sh*t, I hate that!
Don't you hate that?
I had the word two seconds ago in my head, and now it's just **POOF** gone.