I went to the big orange – Home Depot silly – to find out how much it would cost to outfit the Brick House with some solar shades. Wowwwweee its pricey. To cover all my stupid custom windows with delicious white roller solar shades would end up costing about $3000 (without this months advertised 15% discount of course).
Surprise, surprise, I don’t have $3000 just laying around burning a hole in my pocket. Yes, the shades would save me money on my energy bill and be great looking – but I don’t think that I’m going to get any real money out of the Brick House due to its questionable location – so I don’t want to invest too heavily in upgrades I can’t take with me.
Being cheap, I went to the big blue and yellow – Ikea you scamp – and checked out their selection of roller shades. Oh by the way – I hate hate HATE blinds (vertical or horizontal) or shutters – yuck. So I think simple roller shades are my only option besides curtains…or roman shades…but I kind of hate those too…
Meet:
ENJE Roller Blind – $24.99 (34″ x 98″)
TUPPLUR roller shade – $19.99 (32″ x 77″)
I bought one of each to test them out. The winner is Enje – I guess. The Tupplur shade is good for privacy – its much less see through but poorly made and cheap ugly vinyl with a cheap ugly white pull chain that looks like it was made as an elementary school toy (or maybe its just all the warning pictures of choking babies giving me that impression). So its ass is getting returned – pronto.
For mere aesthetics I like the Enje roller blind more, but it has its issues. Its pretty see through at night but opaque during the day. The hanging hardware sticks way out to the side – so it fits in my 34″ window, but there is an inch gap between the window frame and fabric shade – so only the glass is just so slightly covered. I have to mount it to the inside top of my frame so the unit hangs about an inch below were I would want it to. And for some reason my test roller sits a little crooked. Its probably my crooked house, but I demand symmetry!
On the plus side – I think you could really easily cut these Enje shades to a custom size! For my weird sized windows this would be great and I bet you could replace the fabric if you got really fancy – which of course I’ve already started thinking about. So they can be customized pretty easily and I could to do my whole house for only a few hundred dollars. It was pretty easy to install as well, which is always a plus.
