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(More customer reviews)Behind the screen of this computer is a 6-foot wide south-facing window, so on sunny days, the glare is intolerable, even though the mini-blinds. (If you're wondering why I put the screen there, it's because I setup this room in 1993, when my younger eyes were not yet glare-sensitive. Moving everything now would be impractical.)
I tried a black-out roller-shade, which completely solved the glare problem, but which broke quickly (would not go up). Next, I tried the translucent version of these Redi Shades. Didn't cut the glare nearly enough, but at least I learned how to install these things.
These room-darkening shades seem to do the job. They are not black-out, but probably cut over 95% of the light, and with the mini-blinds in front of them, the window might just as well be a wall.
For this 6' window, I used two shades, side-by-side, with an inside mount. Having now fitted and installed four of these things, I'd like to pass on some tips to make the installation easier:
1. when measuring for an inside mount, make sure to measure so that the shade will be just a bit narrower than you think you need. If it's even a hair too wide, you will have to re-cut, and that is not the easiest thing to do. If you're measuring for an outside mount, this isn't an issue.
2. cutting: the shade comes with a sharp knife (not a serrated blade), and rulers are printed on labels along both ends of the bottom edge of the shade. Also, there is a plastic sleeve that acts as a cutting guide. Before starting to cut, remove all four end-caps. You don't want to cut through them. I'd suggest pulling out some of the expanded polystyrene that is inside the rail, so that you don't cut through it and get tiny flakes of polystrene all over everything. (And you know how I learned that, don't you?)
2A. USE THE CUTTING GUIDE! It'll give you a smooth cut with little or no effort and no error. Cutting begins on the ruler edge, which is the bottom of the shade, and you cut towards the top (holding the shade upside-down). Both the bottom and the top rails are thin hollow plastic, and between them is the shade. The guide won't let you cut into the top plastic rail, so you'll have to remove the guide and finish by hand.
2B. to cut through the plastic rails (bottom, which you cut first, and top, which you cut free-hand at the end), use a fine-bladed hacksaw. The included knife can eventually cut through the rails, but it takes a lot of time and effort.
2C. once through the bottom plastic rail, switch to the included knife and cut down until it hits the bottom of the guide. Remove the guide and cut through the plastic top rail with the hacksaw.
2D. repeat this on the other side. (An "inch" on each ruler actually is 1/2 inch, so to make a 35-inch shade, you'll be cutting 1/2 inch from each side. The "35" mark is a 1/2 inch from the "36" and 1/2 inch from the "34".)
3. now comes the hardest part, and the reason the shades got 4 instead of 5 stars: The directions say to peel off the rulers, which are just stickers. But those stickers have a strong adhesive and they tear easily, making it very difficult to remove them. And, since they're on the lower-edge of the shade, if you don't remove them, you will see them whenever you raise the shade. When I got to the fourth shade, I finally found a way to get the stickers off without tearing: put some label-removing solvent on a q-tip and keep rubbing the solvent into the underside of the sticker as you s-l-o-w-l-y pull it off.
4. The rest of the included instructions are fine: they tell you how to position and attach the hangers to the window frame, and then how to snap the shade into place. Not that anyone will need this, but the hangers for the room-darkening shades are a different size (bugger) than the ones for the translucent shades, so they're not interchangeable.
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I don't know how durable these will be, and in particular, how many times they can be raised & lowered before the mechanism breaks. There's no reason to think this will happen soon, but after the roller-shade broke so quickly, I'm a but skeptical.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Redi Shade Easy Touch Cellular Window Shade 36x64-Inch, Room Darkening White
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