The Last Shade!

So.  This may look like a totally normal, nondescript shade to you but to me it looks VICTORY! Months of work, sweat and tears went into putting up this shade.  This is the last one we had to get up in our house.  We opted for Hunter Douglas honeycomb shades, which are really really good - one of my favorite pastimes has become putting my hand behind the shade when it's really hot and going "wow, that's a really big temperature difference!" (A knows what I"m capable of)

We'd installed most of them a few months ago but this particular room was still missing paint, and we decided, hey, let's not put up that shade until we paint (given that I am prone to getting paint everywhere).  So we waited to paint.  Turns out, we didn't have enough paint to finish the room.  Lovely.  Now we were waiting for the store up the street to have a sale on paint (is it possible to go into the negatives with steps?  It sure felt like we did....)  One day I'm digging around in my garage and find an extra can of paint.  Score!  So we paint the room (including the sill).  Except now we can't find the brackets (face>>palm).  So we stall for a week or so while we try to remember where we (read: me) put those buggers...not in the garage... not in the spare bedroom closet...not next to the shade.... turns out, I decided they'd be safest tucked in the corner of the office closet, next to the bookcase (don't ask).  So we gather up our supplies (drill, screwdriver, tape measure and brackets):

(I feel obligated to point out that all the streaking on the window is inside the window - it's condensation.  Dave Barry nailed it when he said homes are constantly trying to degrade into a big pile of junk.)

 Unfortunately, installing a shade doesn't yield much as far as photo ops.  But here's a picture of a bracket hanging by one of the wall anchors (we used ridiculously strong ones that were designed to hold 30 pounds each - woe to the person who comes after us in this house and tries to remove these blinds).

 The end result?  A beautiful, beautiful shade that protects against the sun and heat and offers privacy while still allowing light to filter in.  We had to adjust the bottom endcaps a little, but it was all worth it.  Now we can finally start decorating our spare bedroom!