The Window

#322 The Window

The living room window is about seven feet wide and has vertical blinds. Sturdy, professional installed, custom-made vertical blinds. Bought from a Leading Big Box Home Improvement Center, called Leading Big Box Home Improvement Center, and guaranteed for life.

They don’t say who’s life. But let’s not quibble about little things.

The blinds open and close using a push and pull and twist rod that let’s you twist the blinds to a “let in the light” position, and push it open, pull it closed and twist the blinds to a “don’t-let-in-the-light” position.

The push, pull and twist rod is attached to the rest of the mechanism using a clip shaped like Casper the Friendly Ghost.

If you’re not really careful, Casper lets go of the rod and you can’t push or pull or twist anything. And you can’t put it back.

So, it’s off to Leading Big Box Home Improvement Center to get a new Casper. Or a new rod.

Leading Big Box Home Improvement Center has moved from one location to another since the purchase and professionally installed, and no longer stocks parts.

Plus, the guy standing in the aisle and adjusting his handsome Leading Big Box Home Improvement Center red vest, wants to know who custom made the custom-made vertical blinds.

It doesn’t have a label.

If you made ghosts that can’t hold onto a push pull and twist rod for maybe a year or so, you wouldn’t want YOUR name out there, either.

So let’s take a little plastic rod (cost: $00.97) home and try it out.

It doesn’t work.

Several phone calls later, we figure out the culprit, and – since there’s a lifetime guarantee, order the Casper clip and (just to be sure,) a spare rod. (Spare the rod and spoil the custom-made, professionally installed vertical blinds.)

A couple of weeks later, while wondering out loud what happened to Casper, the doorbell rings, and there’s the UPS guy with a package. It is over eight feet long.

We know this without measuring, because the ceiling is eight feet high and the box is too big to stand on end.

Talk about careful packing!

Here’s where investigative reporter school comes into play. It must be the whole mechanism. Not just Casper. Not just the rod. The whole damn thing that sits inside the window and on which the blades of the blind clip.

There’s little doubt that while the custom-made, professionally installed, lifetime guaranteed blinds are under warranty (no one involved in the purchase has died as of the time the package arrived) the professional installation is not.

There’s a reason you get these things professionally installed.

Usually the reason is you don’t know how to do it yourself and the “easy” instructions are in Chinese.

Well, there’s a Chinese-reader/speaker in this household.

Gotcha!

Once again, rugged individualism triumphs over Leading Big Box Home Improvement Center.

Now, the hard part: Amateur Installation.

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.