We don’t often think about our curtains and blinds. The way they let in or block out light as we desire. Sometimes we might get frustrated when they don’t work as effectively as we think they should, or when we have to clean them (I’ve never tried washing curtains but venetian blinds are a pain to dust). But I think we often just take them for granted. All windows have them. Except when they don’t.
There are some significant renovations going on in our block of units. Basically the whole front of 11 of the units needed to be replaced. The wooden frames would be replaced with metal. That meant the whole front had to come off.
Here’s what it looked like for one of the units (friends of ours recently moved out of this unit).
Here’s our house with the whole front gone. We put up plastic painting sheets as makeshift walls to keep the dust off our furniture.
Unfortunately the workmen had to pull the edge of it down so that they could get in. They put the new frame on the same day but the insides weren’t finished until several days later. So we lived in our blind-less, compacted living space with our plastic sheets hanging from the ceiling until the inside could be finished. I felt like I was living in a fishbowl.
Thankfully our friends who were away on holidays and had lent us their car had also generously lent us their house and bed if we needed it. So we took refuge in their house most of the time. We decided to sleep in our own bed, despite having no blinds, knowing that if the sun didn’t wake us, the workmen starting at 7:30 would.
We’re still waiting for the blinds to go back up, but when we got back from our week away the inside panelling was finished and even the door was painted. I stuck some newspaper to the window following some of the other units so that we would have a little bit of privacy. Here’s hoping the blinds will go up soon so we can spread our furniture out again!
