The Chris Cardé Experience

I decided the other day that my new place needed some sprucing up, and that window dressings to replace my recycled Ikea curtains (that were, incidentally, twice as long as my windows). I rolled out in my Prius to the friendly neighborhood Bed Bath and Beyond and went to work, scrutinizing all sorts of window treatments. Curtains, roman shades, bamboo curtains, frilly things, fuzzy things, things that looked suspiciously like they used to be alive. If BBandB has it into their window-stuff section, I'll guarantee to you that I stood there and pondered it.

At the end of this investigation (and after merely one rushed trip home upon realizing that the size of my windows was a piece of information that was critical to success), I proudly walked up to the register with what I felt were two selections that I could be proud of. Mature, refined, and masculine, there was clearly nothing except a lazy Sunday afternoon session with a power drill and screwdriver between me and bachelor-pad nirvana - or at least asthetic mediocrity combined with the relative privacy of window coverings.

I got home and got to work. My bedroom selection: an off-white (some might say 'cream') Roman Shade. Mounted on a curtain rod (which, in my bedroom, already existed), it was a no-brainer. Unambiguously opaque, and thankfully neutral-colored (as compared to my bright orange bedroom walls), how could I go wrong? It was even PERFECTLY sized to the dimensions of the window. Just slide it on to the curtain rod, and re-attach the rod to the holders to the size of each window-- uhoh. The holders were on the SIDES of the windows? My mistake quickly became apparent... The shade slides back and forth on the rod whenever I pull it up or down (or sometimes when I just look at it funny). In the one-minus-infintesimal chance than that it ends up less than perfectly-centered on the window, my neighbors get a very nice vertical slice of a glance into my life -- or at least my bedroom. But, those sneaky mofos at BBandB had packaged the shade into a box with an impossibly low volume, effectively discouraging home improvements novices such as myself from repackaging and rerturning the shade. So, I resigned myself to accept the shade as a semi-functional reminder of why I shouldn't even think about starting these projects.

Ok. So that was a slight screw-up. Roughly paraphrased from Apollo 13, I guess that was our glitch for this day's mission. On to the living room window!

For this window, I had selected a bamboo decorative shade. It was nicer looking than the roman shade, and for some reason (soon to become obvious to me) cheaper than the roman shade. Also unlike the roman shade, it came with its own mounting system and hardware (which, by the way, clearly was of the same size, caliber, and complexity as the Bay Bridge's most critical structural components). I went to work with my pencil, measuring tape, drill, bits, and screwdriver.

Many holes and much sawdust later, I had the shade up. Yes! Half of my bachelor-pad asthetic nirvana! I just had to lower the shade to expose the beatiful wood tones to lucky occupants of my pad. Let's see... untagle the drawstring... pull to the left to unlock the mechanism..

DOH! There's a #&@$% WALL there! That's right folks. My shade is hard to use because your hand and the wall fight for the same space. Usually (but not always) the wall wins. Ok, that's glitch number 2, and the job's done.

"Not bad for a software guy," I tell myself! Time to settle down with a beer. But first, I take out the garbage. On the way back in from the garbage, I notice that my #&@$* new shade is TRANSPARENT when backlit! That's right. I've just invested money in a shade that prevents ME from seeing my stalkers (and looks wood-tstic), but doesn't stop anybody from seeing me. I guess this is where the whole garden apartment thing comes in handy.

Not surprisingly, I called a [mechanical engineering PhD] friend for the next weekend's project, the results of which will be the topic of next week's rant. ;)