Save and Conquer

Most every window in a house needs to have some sort of window treatment to give privacy and block direct sunlight. When we first moved into our house, we bought vertical blinds for three large windows, two with sliding glass doors. These were fairly inexpensive and came with standard plastic valances to hide the support rails.

After a few years, the clear plastic supports for the valances started to yellow and look tired. I asked my wife what she thought about replacing the window treatments with something more modern. She whole-heartedly agreed. We went online to look for something new.

That’s when we remembered why we had bought vertical blinds in the first place. Window treatments are expensive! To buy fabric drapes that we both agreed for just our largest window was in the neighborhood of $500. It would be over $1000 to do just the large windows in our living and family rooms.

OK, how about just getting new valances? We wanted something better than the cheap standard plastic valances. My wife really wanted fabric. Check the online catalogs…estimated price with shipping: $330 per window.

So, for half the cost of last year’s week-long vacation to visit relatives in Tennessee, we could put fabric valances on two windows. No deal!

My wife then volunteered to buy fabric and make valances if I would install wood planks above the blinds that she could attach the fabric to. Deal!

I went to Home Depot and she went to Michael’s Craft store. One day later, we had two new color-coordinated valances for a cost of around $30 per window.

Stumble it!