The Shade

Originally written Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Casie and I went shopping yesterday for our new home. We needed some minor household items, like a coat rack, a shoe rack, and a rug for the front hallway. I needed some blinds for my office window, because from about 3:30 to 5:00, the sun shines directly into my eyes, making working on my computer rather difficult.

Casie suggested WalMart, but I disagreed and suggested Zellers instead, because I have decided to never again buy anything at WalMart. I dislike their horrendous polices toward their employees and the environment, as well as the damage they cause to local businesses. I don’t know if Zellers is any better but they can hardly be worse.

Being the design diva she is (in spite of the occasional notable “design crime”), Casie recommended that I not get plain white blinds for my office, but instead purchase an off-white colour. There were none that fit my window, so I purchased a “Decorative Bamboo Shade”, brand “Homestyles”, instead. It looked attractive in the packaging, Casie agreed, so the purchase was made.

I forgot all about it until this afternoon, when right on the dot at 3:30, the sun started to peek out from under my neighbour’s roof and shine into my office. “Time to put up my new blinds”, I thought, so I went at it.

Thus began a battle of epic proportions. The Bamboo Shade scored the first point when I tried to open the packaging. Packaged in a tough resilient clear plastic seemingly suitable for transporting hazardous material, it took multiple stabs with a screwdriver for me to crack its outer shell. As I reached into the package to retrieve the Shade, the sharp edges of the package sliced into my arm and I began to bleed slightly.

First blood goes to the Shade. I retrieved the Shade and its incomprehensible instructions. Two odd metal attachments were included from which the Shade was to be hung, after they were screwed to the window frame. The instructions recommended I use a drill to put holes in the frame, lacking a drill, I was forced to improvise and used a nail to put small holes in first. Standing on top of my office table, sweating as the sun beat down and cursing as I struggled to put the screws into the window frame, I finally managed to securely place each bracket.

Now it was time to put the Bamboo Shade up. As I lifted it, the two cords used to raise and lower the Shade slid out of the Shade and dropped to the floor. “That’s odd”, I thought, “I wonder if they are meant to be unattached like that.” I lifted the shade up. It has a wood frame at the top, with two pieces cut into it that are meant to slide into the protruding metal edges of the supports I had just screwed in. With the Shade fighting me every inch of the way, its end sweeping important papers and bills off my desk into disarray, I struggled to raise it to the correct position…only to realize that it would not fit. The way the brackets were designed meant that you could not attach the Shade to each at the same time – you would have to screw in one, then put the Shade up, then screw in the other.

Naturally, the instructions made no mention of this. In fact, the instructions failed to account for the standard type of window installation I was attempting altogether. Frustrating, but no big deal. I would have to remove one of the brackets. So I grabbed the screwdriver and got to it.

I removed one screw successfully and started on the second for the leftmost bracket. Except that I couldn’t unscrew it for some reason….ah. The screw head has lost its indentation – the act of screwing it in stripped the metal slots from the screw head. I now had no way of removing the screw.

Round two: victor, Bamboo Shade. You’re not going to win that easily, I thought. I grabbed my hammer and got to work smashing and clawing at the bracket. After risking tearing the entire window frame from the wall, paint chips flaking off the joints in the frame and chunks of plaster echoing inside the walls, I finally removed the bracket. Then I started jockeying the Shade back into place. I got it secured on the left – time for the right. I put the bracket back where I wanted it and grabbed the screwdriver. That’s when I noticed that once the Shade was in place, it covered the screw holes. I had no way of reaching them!

Reeling from the Shade’s relentless onslaught of sheer bastardness, I grabbed my hammer and a couple of nails. No more would I even attempt to use the brackets, clearly designed by someone who would benefit from a highschool education. I hammered the Shade into the frame. “Done”, I thought. “I’m done! Now all I have to do is get the cords working…”

I reached for the instruction manual once again. The only mention of the cords was in this paragraph:

“To lower the shade, simply pull the cord to the left to release the cordlock and hold while the shade drops. Allow the shade to drop to the desired height.” Etc.

That the word “simply” even appeared in the instructions was an insult. I saw that the cords flying out of the Shade was yet another insidious Shade tactic. I examined the mechanism that the cord ran through. Two small gears, a pulley, some plastic pieces…it was incomprehensible. I went downstairs to examine a similar shade. A simple mechanism with one pulley showed me with one glance that the Shade had indeed devised a clever strategy to defeat me. I grabbed the longest cord and got to work trying to thread it through the mechanism, my only clue the line in the manual that read, “Pull the cord to the right to lock, pull the cord to the left to release”.

After using a formidable array of weapons, including a nail, a pair of tweezers, some pliers, and very nearly the hammer, I was able to thread the cord through the mechanism and through the second pulley. The remainder of the cord placement was obvious – through a hole in the Shade, through a couple of loops, then tied off at the back. The second cord went faster than the first. Finally, it was done. The Shade was pinned to the wall. After one-and-a-half hours, I was victorious.

Yet the Shade would have the last word. It hung there in front of the window, a handsome addition to my office. I pulled the cords to raise it. It raised in a sloppy mess of folds and stopped two feet before it reached the top of the window. That is as high as it would go. I had just lost 20 percent of my window, permanently. And the 20 percent I had lost was covered in a bulging, amateurish mess of sagging brown folds. I stared at the Shade and it stared back at me. We both knew who the real victor was.