It can happen…
Our expert team of installers go out to site to install the carefully chosen blinds. I am sure I ordered the blind correctly. And I am sure my installer has his spirit level with him to ensure a nice, even fit. Then the customer calls me telling me “My blind is skew!!!!’. Each and every time it turns out to be NOT the blind that is skew, but the customer’s wall/ceiling/window is skew.
Once I left my house at 7:30pm at night to visit a customer down the road who was insistent that her blind was not installed correctly. I grabbed my spirit level, jumped into my car, climbed up on a step stool and i gratefully saw bubble in the level perfectly centered! The customer had no idea how badly skew her walls were. I wouldn’t have had any idea when measuring, especially as her blind wasn’t going inside the window reveal.
So what do we do when a window is skew?
Last week we had a customer who needed her Venetian Blind (for more on venetian blinds see this post) in her bathroom installed above the window. As the window opened inwards, this was the only way to install. My poor installer had a heck of a time, as the tiles were all put on skew on the wall. This created a nightmare of an optical illusion once the blind was in place. It took him some time to find the perfect place to install the blind that both blind and wall would look as straight as possible. With much determination he found the ‘sweet spot’, leaving a very grateful customer.
Sometimes it is the lintel above the window that wasn’t put in quite straight. Then when the (mostly with Roller Blinds -for more on roller blinds see this post) blind comes down it isn’t hanging straight. In this case, my installer needs to take extra care and caution. We can’t leave a roller blind that doesn’t go up straight. This damages the material as it goes into the mechanism. This will start damaging the blind. My installer has a few tricks up his sleeve to alleviate this. Whether adjusting brackets slightly, using spacers when necessary, or a host of other quick fixes, we always get it right in the end. I am not sure the customer always appreciates the time that such an endeavour can take up. Most windows are up to about 10mm. different in either or both width and drop. We once had a window that had about a 30mm. discrepancy in width. I informed the customer that the straight blind would exacerbate the look of her window being skew.
Can the blind itself be skew?
That reminds me of the time the customer called in a panic that his roller blind wasn’t cut straight. That is one thing I’ve yet to see. Huge machines cut roller blind material perfectly straight each time. Roller blinds are cut by precise machinery meaning that a Roller Blind is always cut straight. I went out to meet the customer after installation. I proved to him with the tape measure that the blind was, in fact, cut perfectly straight, and that his window is skew!
We can’t change the way your house was built or how skew your window is, but we can definitely sell you a blind that will work with it!
