My room too bright. Please help.

September 24, 2008 3:05 PM

What part of my window do I hang the dang blinds from?

I want to get some blinds for my front picture window. It's divided into a large middle section, and two narrower side sections. See bad pic here.

My question is: where should I hang them from? If you look at this close-up of the top portion, you'll note that the outer frame is wooden, but it's beveled and angled. Doesn't seem like a good place to attach a mount.
The inner frame portion looks great for hanging blinds from - but it isn't wood. It's made out of... urm... window frame stuff. I dunno, it feels like a hard plastic.
Can I drill into that and hang the mount from that plasticy stuff?
I need to know where the blinds are gonna go before I can get the right measurements, and I'm frustrated.

(also, please let me know if the picture links don't work.)

posted by Tbola to Home & Garden (7 answers total)

You should attach it to the underside of not-wood, but I dunno. Plastic might a) be weak; b) cost you some deposit if you rent. What about to the sides of the window? You could install a furring strip across the undersides fastened to the sides (possibly ugly), letting you screw the blinds into the wood piece. You might also be able to use some kind of adhesive between the frame and the blinds.
posted by rhizome at 3:31 PM on September 24, 2008

Don't mount to the vinyl. It won't hold.
You might be able to mount the blinds to the underside of the second "wood" section...the one abutting the first "not wood" section. It's kind of hard to tell, though. Totally depends on the mounting options of the blinds.

I had a somewhat similar issue with blinds in my studio. I ended up mounting a plank above the top moulding and mounting the blinds to that. It works.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:37 PM on September 24, 2008

It's hard to tell exactly what's going on there from the pictures. If the "not wood" is solid and not part of the window itself (in other words, if it's not hollow vinyl, which could be part of the window itself and you should absolutely not puncture) then it's likely extruded PVC molding and you can treat it like wood. Blinds would usually be cut to fit the width of the window on the inside of that frame and hung from the bottom-most "not wood" annotation in your picture (so the mounting screws, which would be coarse-thread wood screws, are pointing up).
posted by range at 4:36 PM on September 24, 2008

Forget blinds. You want window film.
posted by yclipse at 6:38 PM on September 24, 2008

It looks like an outside mount would work, where the hardware is installed either just above or to the left and right of the window. Information here, here, and here.
posted by mewithoutyou at 6:48 PM on September 24, 2008

There are two usual ways two hang blinds, either on the inside of the window frame (looks nicer,) or outside, on the top portion of the frame (sometimes fits better.) You can mount the blinds on the wall, but it doesn't look good or hang right. For you, I'd recommend mounting them on the outside (the wood part) choose blinds that are 1.5 to 2 inches wider than the measurement of the indside of the window frame. You CAN mount blinds on a vinyl or aluminum frame, but it's a bad idea, and once you make holes they are irreparable.
Also note, if you buy, say, 28" blinds, the actual width is 27.5", so that they will fit into a 28" opening.
posted by catatethebird at 7:49 PM on September 24, 2008

if you're set on blinds, i'm not really sure. but if you're open to drapes, you could mount a curtain rod above the windows and then hang drapes/curtains off of that (that's what we've done for windows where there's no real place for a blind).
posted by misanthropicsarah at 6:47 AM on September 25, 2008