Warning: this home improvement update is not very exciting. But it's worth mentioning thanks to the money we just shelled out for it. It's kinda like a new roof - way more money than you want to spend but you know it's necessary even though no one other than the homeowners will really notice or appreciate it.
So here 'tis: we got custom blinds.
WHOA!! I CAN'T HANDLE THAT MUCH EXCITEMENT!!
I know. Crazytown.
Our living room is a two-story room that has four windows up high on one wall. I would show you a picture of them sans new blinds but I seem to have deleted those. Oops. The windows bring a lot of natural light into the room, which I absolutely love, but there are times during the day when it's just a little bit too much sunshine.
Take sitting on the couch for example. Let's say you're on maternity leave and you've been snuggling up with your cutie pie baby for oh, 4-ish hours watching Law and Order: Special Victims Unit reruns when, like clockwork, ten minutes into the 3pm episode the sun beams are so strong you can feel your sweet pea starting to fry like bacon. Do you know how annoying it is to have to uproot the little nest of necessities you've built around yourself so you can relocate to a chair in the shade? Seriously, the sun rays are so intense it's amazing our couch hasn't caught on fire yet.
And then, after you've survived the hell that is the couch in the mid afternoon, you move onto the kitchen for a nice dinner at the table with your family. But then, boom! The 6:15 sun beams dart through the living room and straight into the kitchen to blind anyone trying to enjoy their chicken enchiladas. No chair is safe as the sun moves around the table within the hour.
After a full summer of being blinded by the light in multiple rooms, we decided to do something about this little first world problem of ours. We called in some professionals to see what they could do.
What they couldn't do - at least not on the first visit - was bring the right sized ladder. Whomp, whomp. I even sent pictures so they could see the window we needed help with and they still came up short. (Ha! Punny.)
On their second time out, they had an extension ladder and the rep was able to climb up to do some measuring. I think he measured for longer than the install took.
And he had quite an audience while he was up on that ladder. Thomas couldn't keep his eyes off him! And Lolli...well, she had to keep her eye on the stranger in the house.
Six weeks later, after maternity leave and SVU marathon days had ended, our custom plantation shutters finally came in. Rep #2 came to install them only to find out that they'd forgotten the hanging strips for one of the four windows. Whomp, whomp again.
A week later he was back with the missing piece - and a buddy to hold his ladder for him. I probably should've offered to do that the first time. Maybe that's why he was sweating bullets. Oops.
Now we are no longer getting sunburns in our living room! Of course, the seasons have also changed so the sun shines in in a different place now, so the true test will be next summer. Maybe I'll have to take 14 weeks off again to make sure they're doing their job.
I took these two pictures below at night so you can see how the actual shutters look when the sun's not blaring behind them. Right now they are pointed up so we still get natural light bouncing around those upper walls, just no more laser beams frying us to pieces. I may have to test them out pointed down a little because I do kinda miss getting to see the sky.
So that's our most recent home improvement project for ya. Not super exciting, but something that will hopefully add value to our home, or at least drastically reduce the amount of SPF we have to apply before hanging out in the living room.
The end.