Blind leading the blinds?

The remote control blinds in our master bedroom stopped working. They have remained stubbornly in the retracted position for a few weeks now. Usually I am all for sunshine, and in Colorado we get more than 290 days of sunshine a year. However, when you're attempting to recover from the excesses of a Friday evening, sunshine streaming into the bedroom early on a Saturday morning is not ideal.

My attempts at trying to diagnose the problem petered out after changing the batteries that drive the blind motor. A quick google of Hunter-Douglas repair locations revealed a facility quite close by. An even quicker phone call established that for a technician to come out and take a look at the offending blind would cost $85, but if I were to take the blind down and bring it in to the repair facility, I could avoid the $85 charge.

So I addressed myself to the task of taking the blind down. The blind is secured to the window frame by a set of three brackets of sturdy plastic, and try as I might I could not pry the blind from the surly grasp of these brackets. There were no screws or other fasteners in evidence, and the screws that held the brackets to the window frame were hidden behind the top of the blind and therefore inaccessible.

I must pause here to mention that I am no stranger to home improvement projects. I once left the family room in our house in Canada in a state of considerable chaos for nearly a year as I attempted to build a new fireplace. That the fireplace was finally built and did not cause the house to fill with smoke or combust spontaneously, is I think, a testament to my skill. My wife's version of events is slightly different. But we digress.

Assuming that the application of brute force would be ill-advised I looked on the web for installation instructions for the Hunter-Douglas Duette blind with the PowerRise option. While the instructions helpfully gave me a step-by-step plan to install the blind, they rather truculently suggested that to take the blinds down I would just have to follow the instructions in the reverse order. Problem with no visible fasteners and the reluctance to use brute force. (Were our government only to use such restraint!)

Convinced that I was missing a simple trick that would cause the blind to separate from its moorings and drop into my waiting hands, I decided to take the coward's way out. The glowering visage of the wife mouthing "J'accuse" while pointing a painted talon my way did nothing to help.
Not that she'd ever say anything like that.

I decided to go to the repair facility and ask for their help to bring the blind down.

So it was, that this morning found me striding into the repair facility looking for dismantling instructions. As I walked in, the woman with the streaked blonde hair and not unattractive features shot a glance at me and said "I'll be right with you, Sir".

As she was attending to another customer, I wandered around the store, sucking my teeth trying to dislodge the piece of gristle from last night's dinner wedged in the back. The thing finally came loose leaving me wondering what I would do next.

As I dug around absently, I noticed that the lint in the pocket of my jeans were a darker blue than the jeans themselves. That occupied my attention for a while, until I spotted a new Range Rover Sport in the parking lot outside the store. As I was computing the precise number of my current cars I would have to sell to afford the beast, Blondie sidled up to me and said "Can I help you?"

I explained the problem with the paucity of exposed fasteners and the reluctance to use brute force. She looked witheringly at me and said "It's quite easy, really. You twist the top of the blind towards you, and they'll pop right off."

"Oh, that's great" I said ingratiatingly "Could you show me how?"

With a toss of her streaked blonde mane and an upward roll of her eyes, she walked over to the demo model of a blind in the showroom, grasped the top of the blind.

"See? Just like this" she said as she gave the blind a forceful wrench upward and outward. There was a crack and the retaining bracket on the left came down to the floor in a small shower of white plastic pieces. The screw holding the bracket to the window frame was left in place with a ring of broken plastic around it, where the bracket had once been.

"That's exactly what I was trying to avoid" I said, trying very hard not to sound smug, and failing.

"Oh, it's not meant to do that" she said. "Well, let's try the bracket on the other side, a bit more gently"

She went over to the other edge of the blind and attempted the same motion, but this time without quite so much of the flourish. At first the blind didn't budge, but then as she progressively applied greater pressure, it seemed to move. And then the fatal crack.

The right hand side bracket joined its recently departed brother on the floor, but in fewer pieces, due no doubt to the delicate touch employed this time.

Quite clearly flustered now, Blondie said "Well, if your break the brackets taking the blind down, we'll give you new ones."

"How much are they?"

"Did you buy the blind here?"

"I don't remember" I said. A lie. "Why?"

"Well, if you bought the blinds here, we'd give you the brackets for free"

"Oh, now that I think about it" glancing upwards thoughtfully, "I think we did"

And so armed with 2 spare brackets and no wiser about taking the blind down without breaking the brackets, I returned home.

This afternoon I once again squared away in front of the blind show it who's boss. I grasped the blind on the left edge, pushed up and out in a smooth motion. I think I must have telegraphed my unhesitant confidence, buoyed by the 2 spare brackets nestled on my work bench.

As I twisted the top of the blind, it parted from its mooring but not without first splintering the bracket into a few large shards. Oh well, I still had one spare bracket. On to the right hand side, and the same upward push and twist.

This one came free easily, and broke only the tip of the bracket. No shower of plastic. Just a broken edge of the bracket, rendering it useless, but no pile of while plastic on the floor.

So the way I figure it, if I had another 16 sets of inoperable blinds, by the time I get to the 16th blind I would have got the hang of this dismantling thing. But as it is, I am going to be making good use of the spare brackets I scored.

And I'm going to have to get rid of the 2 Jeeps and the BMW to make the Range Rover Sport work. Still, there's a thought.....