Help me...I can't stand these blinds!

[Tara]

We have these awful vertical blinds in our living room/dinning room (they cover 2 big sliding doors). I can't stand them. We're renting but I hated them 2 1/2 years ago when we moved in :giggle Some are broken, they never open right. I'll take some pics later but 1 door is a normal sized sliding door but the other one is much larger.

Anyways, I want to put something else there but I don't have a lot of money to work with. I need it so we can still have some privacy as well (especially at night). We have a nosy neighbor behind us & she watches & complains about all the neighbors. Any tips? :lol

[Pragmatist]

I despise vertical blinds. We put floor length curtains over our patio door instead.

[Jemma2]

We had awful, broken verticle blinds over our sliding door too. What I did was to buy two twin size flat sheets from Walmart ($4 each). They were a bit too long for the doors so I folded it at the top a bit to make them shorter. Take safety pins and attach them at the top of the folded sheets as "hooks" and then you can slide them into the groove things that hold the blinds. This works great because now you have "curtains" that you can slide open and closed just as you did the blinds. It works beautifully. I used two twin sheets but you could probably just as easily use one larger one. It just depends on how gathered you want the end result to be. Let me know if you want me to post of pic of it. I'm assuming you'd be able to take the actual blinds off by pulling them free from the plastic pieces holding them. Then that's where you slip in the safety pins that are holding the sheet. I personally can't stand vertical blinds even when they're not all broken and yucky. I like this way better.

[Tara]

Nicole, I would LOVE a picture! I can take them down or whatever I need, as long as I can put them back up when we move (or at least have them in the garage & let the owners now that they can be put back up).

Thank you!

[Jemma2]

http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m86/Jemma2/th_Feb10124.jpg (http://s102.photobucket.com/albums/m86/Jemma2/?action=view&current=Feb10124.jpg)



http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m86/Jemma2/th_Feb10130.jpg (http://s102.photobucket.com/albums/m86/Jemma2/?action=view&current=Feb10130.jpg)

[Aerynne]

Ikea has some nice, fairly inexpensive, floor-length curtains.

[Tara]

Thank you everyone :)

Nicole, thanks SO much for the pictures.

[Drew]

I'm anti verticle blinds from all of my years living in apartments. We have sheers over the sliding door to our deck, but unlike you we don't have any neighbors behind us. Get a nice looking pole (we got ours on clearance at Target) and put up some nice curtains if sheers won't give you the privicy you need.