Re-Stringing window shades

We have non-standard window coverings in Miss Doozie - as per normal in a Blue Bird bus, I guess. Most RVs have Day-Night shades that are attached at top and bottom and are slid up and down along those strings. We have those kinds of shades next to the driver's and passenger seats. But most of the windows have something more like a shade that might be found in a house, I guess.

This is the type of window covering that we have on most of our windows. The bottom part is a "day shade" and the top part is a black-out shade and are kind of like a Roman shade.

A few weeks ago, I ordered the materials to re-string our shades from BlindParts.com - and had them sent to General Delivery in Parker. I picked the box up while we were with the Christian Fellowship group in Quartzsite. My hope was that I might be able to get help from some of the Blue Bird group in Quartzsite, but the weather was so chilly that I didn't get to work on it while we were there.

This morning I noticed that one of the strings on the shade next to the bed was quite frayed. Those two shades have been giving us the most trouble (hard to get to come down evenly) and were the impetus for ordering the re-stringing supplies. Seeing the frayed string galvanized us into action today.

We had decided that we would start on one of the shades in the front part of the bus: if we couldn't get it completed in one day, it wouldn't be as difficult to deal with having it missing as having one of the shades in the bedroom out of commission. In addition, the window coverings in the front of the bus are not as wide, so we thought that they might be easier to start with.

We had taken down the shade behind the driver's seat when we were in Cottonwood and had taken a good look at the components that we would need to order to replace. We had also vacuumed it while we had it out - there are plastic supports behind the Roman shade part that probably give (gave) the shade some stability to the folds, but these have disintegrated with sun/heat so we removed most of that from the shade. We decided to start our re-stringing effort with that shade.

Taking it down from the window involved releasing 3 metal clips that hold its top support to the top of the window frame, behind the valence.

This is the part that was attached by clips to the top of the window frame (the horizontal part, not the plastic end piece). We took the plastic end pieces off, but ended up we did not need to remove them based on how we did the re-stringing.

At the bottom of the "day" shades was a metal piece that we needed to remove. That is a piece of Velcro that we think the previous owner put at the end of the horizontal piece to keep it from hitting against the sides of the window frame.

Under the Velcro piece was a piece of plastic - we took it off on one end, and that allowed us to slide the metal bottom horizontal part off the bottom of the day shade.

Removing that bottom metal piece exposed the end of the strings of the day shades - they had a knot that was enclosed in a tiny metal ball which was then threaded through metal guides at the bottom of the last crease of the day shade.

This allows you to see how tiny the ball is at the bottom of the day shades.

At the base of the Roman shades, there is also a metal ball - we had seen that when we were evaluating the task in Cottonwood and I tried to order some of those balls from the blinds repair place... even sent them a picture asking what these would be called... they said that they didn't have those. They also didn't have those little plastic things that were used to protect the hole at the bottom of the Roman shade... so we are hoping that none need replacing.

One of the things we had read on the Wanderlodge Owners Group was to melt the new string onto the bottom of the old string and pull it through - we didn't have matches or a lighter, but we do have a torch! The pink cup was for water to wet fingers when smoothing the melted strings.

Getting the metal balls open to expose the knot at the bottom of the string was probably the hardest task - we found using these cutters and gently squeezing down was the easiest way to get the small balls opened.

Carefully squeezing down. By the way just behind Dwayne's hands you can see the metal piece that was the bottom horizontal piece on the day shade that we removed to give us access to the bottom of the string.

Since we don't have replacements for these small metal balls, we didn't want to break them...

  Once we got the metal ball open, we cut off the knot, and melted the new string onto the old string. It was really great how easily the new strings were put into place just gently pulling them through. Doing it this way meant that we did not need to get into the upper horizontal piece too. It would be nice to know how to get into that piece because I suspect that we will eventually need to replace the stoppers that hold the strings to keep the shades at a particular height in the window.

We had two sizes of string - 0.9mm for the day shades (which string through the Roman shade holes to the day shades) and 1.2mm for the Roman shades. We put the covers over the stove top and the sink and had a pretty good working area - at a good height for us and, once we taped over the holes in the covers for the stove top and sink, without too many places where things could get dropped and lost.

 You also might notice that over the sink, we have a different kind of window shade - it is a mini blind, but it is attached like normal RV day/night shades, with a string down each side and you raise/lower them by pushing up or pulling down the metal horizontal piece at the bottom.

We got pretty good at getting the small metal balls open. The larger metal balls (at the bottom of the Roman shade) were more of a problem - and they had the small metal balls protecting the knots inside of them! I got good at doing the smaller balls (easier for me to hold them with fingernails) and Dwayne took care of opening the larger metal balls.

We decided we should take a picture of the implements that we ended up using. We got the first shade completed, re-stringing both the day and Roman shades. The Roman shade string was not in as bad of shape, but we decided that, while we're at it, it is better to do the whole job. In addition to the pictured items, we also used the burner.

 The biggest "hint" is to replace the strings before they break! If we have one break, we are going to have to figure out how to get into the top horizontal piece. With the old strings still in place, we could use the "melt the new string to the old and pull through" strategy.

 Our plan is to next do the two large shades in the bedroom area. We may then go ahead and do other shades just to get them all done, or wait until they start to have problems and then do them.