22x36" Enclosed White Blind for Steel Doors
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Product Details
Edition: KitchenTools and Hardware Reviews of 22x36" Enclosed White Blind for Steel Doors
Customer Review: Great Product... Easy to Install, but not quite as easy as the box says
Summary: 4 Stars
First off this seems to be a great product. The blinds look good and move smoothly. The blinds themselves are aluminum, not vinyl which means they won't turn yellow over time. The construction is sturdy enough that I wasn't afraid they were going to break during installation, which will require you to jostle them around some. They fit securely to the door and look seemless. The pictures don't really show it but the unit is about an inch and a half deep or so, so the unit will not be flush with the door surface.
The carton proclaims easy installation, and on paper it is pretty easy but in practice I encountered a number of things that took some time and thought to accomplish.
I cleaned the glass on mine first, I would recommend doing it after you've installed the hanging tabs. If you do it first you have to move the glass somewhere and be careful not to touch and leave finger prints, it's much easier to go from cleaning straight to hanging and avoid this. Make sure you clean the inside of the glass very well, and the door glass. Once these are installed you will not have access to either pane for cleaning. My unit had several stickers attached to it and two foam pieces that kept the blinds from rattling inside the package, this stuff is a pain in the neck to get off. I had to use a razor blade and some lighter fluid (a goo removing product would work as well) to get the stuff off, especially the adhesive from the foam pieces. The unit is shipped with the blinds in the retracted position, and you should not operate them until the unit is installed. I was frustrated that I could not get to the glass behind the blinds (maybe 2 1/2" to 3" at the top) to clean because the blinds cannot be moved out of the way.
Installing the tabs isn't too bad but if your door is like mine (a Frances Shulze) just loosening the screws on your window glass will not do. I needed to gently pry the frame up a (very) little bit I used the upper tabs to do this because they were thinner than the lower spacers. The instructions say that the spacers should be placed "about" 14" up from the bottom of the window frame but I found that you need to be much more precise about their position. Install the upper tabs first and temporarily hang the unit from them and mentally or with a piece of tape mark on the door where the locking tabs will be. Then take the unit down and install the spacers. The spacers need to be just above the highest point of the locking tabs, if they are below they will be in the way.
Once all the tabs are in place you can install the unit. "Hang" the unit from the upper tabs and slide it back and forth a little to get it snug. Rest the unit on the door, you can now push in the tabs. It would be smart to use a block of wood or something that will not mar your door if it slides off to push the tabs in, they're too small to push in and require too much force to push in without hurting your thumbs. I found that applying a little pressure to the tab end with a screw driver helped to guide the tab under the frame. Use the screw driver to press the tab against the door while simultaneously pushing the tab into place.
And your done. Your blind should last you a long time and will look good in the process. Before trying this we tried a magnetic mini-blind and this is by far the superior solution. A little pricey but well worth it in terms of fit and finish.
Edit 1/28/2011:
After a little more than a year of use these blinds look great. However, operation of the blinds (raising and lowering) has dropped off significantly. It has become very difficult to get them to go up or down, you have to put a lot of forces on the handle, almost to the point of being afraid that you might damage the unit. The instructions said to operate the blinds frequently to keep them moving... they weren't kidding.
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