Welcome to The Maintenance Ear. A place to gather news and insight related to maintenance. This blog post is a pregame introduction of The Maintenance Ear on vertical blinds. The more developed page article “The 411 on Vertical Blinds” is where I will continue to add more depth to the discussion through continually adding the best videos, blogs, pictures, diagrams, questions, comments, suggestions, and favorites I can dig up for you on the subject of vertical blinds.
Vertical Blinds are made in many shapes, sizes, styles, and designs, yet they have many things in common. The most basic common parts of wand controlled vertical blinds are the head rail, mounting brackets, master gear, wand, blind vanes (also called slats), stems, gear combs, control rod, end stops (idle ends), retainer clip, valance clips and valances.
From the book Kung Fu Maintenance by James H. Klovach Chapter 17
Corded and chained blinds also have common parts that can be repaired though they are slowly but steadily being phased out due to the choke hazards and the slightly lengthier repair process. Often it takes less time to replace a set of these blinds than to repair them. I will eventually try to go through some different repair techniques for corded vertical blinds if enough people want to know how to repair them mostly for the fun of fixing them. I must tell you however it is on my very back burner due to their inevitable extinction. At the least however you can make corded blinds less dangerous through shortening the cord, wall mounting the cord, shortening the chain and splitting the chain. This is more on my front burner. I will either try to locate a video that shows this technique or I will try to make one ( If you request this I will try to make it faster).
If your blinds are hard to work than you will want to use a silicone spray lubricant along the track and sprockets. Silicone spray is preferred over WD-40 for this application as wd-40 stays wet and will collect dirt and hair where as silicone spray dries but still maintains its slick lubricant qualities.
The question of this blog post, if you choose to answer it, is:
“Do you prefer blinds, shades, or curtains and why?”
My second question is, “Have you heard of this on off window tint?” I heard about it a couple of times a few years ago. The rumor was that it was widely used in Japan. All of a sudden I heard nothing more about it. What I had heard was that it was being used in place of window coverings and that if a button was pushed the window could be seen through perfectly and if the button was pushed again then the glass could not be seen through. If you have any information on this product I should like to hear about it. A whopping Thank You in advance from The Maintenance Ear.
Please leave your clean and clear answers in the comment box below. Thank You.