Metal window blinds at a decent price?

June 22, 2009 7:38 PM

Where can we buy metal window blinds at a reasonable price?

Our cats are systematically destroying all of the cheap plastic blinds in our apartment, and we'd like to restore some privacy to our home. This never happened in our previous apartment, which was equipped with metal blinds. Big-box home improvement stores seem to be a pricey option; we've found plenty of online retailers, but we don't know enough about any of them to choose one. Any suggestions, Window-Anti-Cat-Armor-Filter?

posted by korpios to home & garden (5 comments total)

IKEA carries both metal and wood venetian blinds at a rate of ~$10-50 per window, depending on the size and material, at my last visit.
posted by biggity at 9:11 PM on June 22

Seconding the Ikea blinds. Get them one size wider than needed then cut them down to your required length. Ikea sell a shaped cutter that you use to trim the vanes which leaves a very neat curved corner.

The U-shaped top and oval bottom will also need to be cut to length. The instructions suggest using a hacksaw but I found this hard going and very, very noisy. I switched to some cheap aviation snips which worked really well.
posted by paulash at 10:09 PM on June 22

Replying to my own question: Lowes apparently sells the "Trim&Go" version of Levolor metal blinds; they're cheaper than I've seen elsewhere offline (around $20-30), but they only come in white. I'd rather have silver/chrome, but not if I have to pay a substantial premium.
posted by korpios at 11:40 AM on June 23

Ikea is definitely your friend here but be prepared for a bunch of bent metal blinds if your cats are prone to going at them...
posted by lazywhinerkid at 12:26 PM on June 23

lazywhinerkid: Nah, the cats never messed up the metal blinds in the old place (and not for lack of trying, considering how often they shoved their way past, under, or between them). The thickness of the blinds probably has something to do with it; those blinds weren't flimsy. But even bent blinds would be preferable right now to blinds that are flat-out gone because the cats broke them. ;-)
posted by korpios at 4:36 PM on June 23