This one took me a while. It turned out to be a pain in the ass. But as a dedicated budgeteer, I refused to give up.

We have Hunter-Douglas bottom-up/top down blinds in three rooms, including the office. My wife calls the office ‘the snug’, but that’s another story ripe with reverberations about words and their meanings and intentions. Anyway, I pulled on the cord to lower a blind and it snapped. Thus began my DIY project.

That happened in May. I researched and researched and researched but couldn’t find guidance or parts about our particular blinds and how to fix them. In early June, I reached out to Hunter-Douglas. Through a two week session of correspondence with photographs, we learned that my honeycomb Duetto blinds were manufacturered before 2007 so they had a different mechanism from what they currently make. Coming through like champs, though, Hunter-Douglas identified the parts I needed and said, “We’ll send them to you.” And then did, no charge for anything.

The parts arrived at June’s end. Meanwhile, the snug, excuse me, office, is the house’s warmest room. It’s also our most used. With only a desk, wall-mounted TV, a few book cases, a desk chair, recliner, and accent chair, we spend hours each day in that room reading, watching television, surfing the net, playing ‘puter games, and on the phone. It would clearly and easily win a household poll for ‘most popular room’. The cats are there just because we are. That’s their M.O.

One reason this room is so warm is that it has a standard ceiling. Much of the house has a ‘high ceiling’. That lets summer heat climb. Yes, it doesn’t do much to help us keep warm in the winter. The other reason for this room’s warmth is that its big window, which takes up most of the outside wall, faces west. The sun starts blazing through it at 3 PM in the summer. It doesn’t stop until the sun sets five hours plus later. The weather station is in there. When it’s over 90 F outside, this room will easily climb into the upper 80s. We use a vertical electric fan to chill us.

I’d taken the blind down for repairs, so that window was exposed. I dealt with that by hanging a large white bath towel on the window via clothes pins. Didn’t look pretty — you should have seen my wife’s scowl when she contemplated it — but it protected us from the sun and gave us needed privacy.

The parts arrived and I commenced on repairs. All went well. At first. The DIY corollary to Murphy’s Law says, “If complications are possible, they will happen.” For me, the complications came when I tried sliding the entire thing back together. It would not go as shown in ten million online videos. Talk about aggravating. Infuriating. Frustrating.

My wife was sanguine. “You’ll figure it out. You always do.”

I shook my head. “I think I might have to take it in for repairs.”

“Whatever you think is best.”

That was in mid-July. I researched repair centers while studying the blinds. Every third day or so, I’d try again to slide it all together. I tried carefully greasing pieces, and I tried different angles. But in studying the blind issue, I became convinced that the top fabric piece was the culprit. It was hitting against the pull/cranking mechanism. I think, I decided, I might need to cut that thing. I really didn’t want to cut that that thing, though. It’s not just fabric; it is fabric and plastic, and holds the mounts for the spools and shafts which operate the up/down mechanisms. It keeps it all aligned. Besides, I tasked myself, how exactly are you going to cut it? Exacto knife? Pocket knife? Box cutter, carpet cutter, tin snips, wire cutters?

No, I finally said: nursing shears.

With the plastic/fabric slid in as far as possible, I picked up the nursing shears. These are scissors which hospitals use to cut away clothing when people come in with injuries. With them, I cut two inches on either side of the end of the recalcitrant plastic/fabric piece. Lifting it up, I slid the thing home and closed my little flap.

Well done, I exulted.

Except, the lines were now hopelessly tangled.

Aw, fuuuucccckkkk, I morosely groaned.

With some work, I untangled it all enough that I could mount it and close it 80% of the way, top to bottom. But I could not raise it from the bottom. I could lower it from the top, though.

“You did it,” my wife said when she saw.

I shook my head. “No.” I explained the remaining problem. Then came the gut-wrenching clincher. “I might need to take it back apart again.”

Eyes widening, she literally blanched. “Oh, no.”

I set my jaw. “I put it together once. I can do it again.” My fingers were crossed when I said that.

I left it like that for several days. Every once in a while, I gazed at it all and thought about what needed done, but I was chicken shit. I worried that I’d make it worse. Finally, sucking it up, I said, “Enough.”

I took it all apart again. I carefully worked on the lines and spools and untangled it all. Then, I put it back together.

I did it in the morning so the sun wasn’t beaming through the window. It was cool, in the high sixties as morning developed. I had the window open. Despite a cool breeze, I was sweating bullets.

But it’s up. Together. And it works.

Thank the DIY gods.