In July 2021, I vacationed for two weeks in the mountains of West Virginia, near Cooper Rock State Park (east of Morgantown).  It was idyllic, as the apartment I rented was a tiny studio, attached to a huge custom-built Craftsman-style house perched on one of the mountains.  The apartment was very comfortable and well-decorated in an industrial-farmhouse style. It was trendy but not overly, because it was also a mix of traditional style.  During that vacation, that’s probably when I decided I was (mostly) ready to become a homeowner, and that I knew I wanted to decorate it nicely, possibly inspired by that apartment.

The apartment had nice large windows, with faux wood blinds, facing west, and it was very soothing to see the sunset most evenings.  It was the first time in my life that I had cared about anything like nice window blinds, and depending on the time of the day, I was constantly tilting them or raising them up to let in more light and the views to both birdfeeders and mountain vistas.

When I was house-hunting, I knew that one thing I needed was to live somewhere that had good windows with natural light. My apartment had large windows in all the rooms but the lighting hadn’t mattered much until the pandemic started; being on lockdown and finding out that my living room was really a dark dungeon added to my cabin fever at times.

I wanted a house with a decent view out of the windows, if possible, though on my budget I was unsure what was affordable. I’m in NJ so the “view” isn’t necessarily that picturesque (compared to the view I had on the West Virginia vacation), but I was hoping for something decent.  Windows turned out to be one of those dealbreaker things for me as I saw houses, and I knew my realtor was listening to me because he showed me homes that had good natural lighting, not cave-like at all.

I fell in love with the house I bought (as you guys probably know by now!), especially the 20+ large windows that let in a lot of natural light. In fact, the windows let in so much natural light because, as part of the sellers fixing up the house (i.e., de-catting it, which consisted of them removing most carpets and all window treatments), they had not installed a single window fixture. No blinds, curtains, or even curtain rods to adorn the windows. (I promise you, there are more “fun” anecdotes in future blogposts on what else was missing.)

Even before I closed on the house, I bought a bunch of paper blinds, on my parents’ advice to get the windows covered up quickly, for security reasons. And, armed with the blinds and some duct tape I already owned, in a Hello Kitty pattern, I had my awesome friends (who are mostly taller than me) help me get the paper blinds up.  A few days later, my family was over, to check out the house, and my nephew (age 8, and very outgoing) kept giggling over the Hello Kitty duct tape!

My parents were extremely generous with a housewarming gift of money (which meant my dad handed me a large stack of $20 bills) and a recommendation for window blinds, Instant Blinds in Bordentown. So, in mid-December, we went to the store and I looked at every blinds sample they had, and talked to the very helpful and friendly staff about what might work best.  I showed them photos of the windows, and though my mom kept saying “get cellular blinds” I couldn’t go with that option because they would have been too thick and shut out the views I needed to preserve.  I had 12 windows that I wanted to have blinds installed on (the living room alone has 5 windows) and wanted to be able to see my huge yard!

So, I chose a light oak 2” faux wood blind for the kitchen window (over the sink) and white pearl 2” faux wood blinds for the other 11 windows.  The next week, Steve Lutz (the owner and installer) came over to measure the windows and confirm the order, and when he looked at the temporary paper blinds I had up, he burst out laughing!

“In all my years of doing blinds, I’ve never seen this!” he exclaimed, pulling out his notebook and measuring tape, grinning.  “Hello Kitty duct tape, now I’ve seen everything!”

“My mom had given me the duct tape—I wanted to not spend money every second on this house.  Just every few minutes,” I replied, also laughing. 

In early January, I took down the paper blinds, as Steve returned to install the faux wood blinds, which were the perfect color to complement the window frames’ trim (SW Snowbound).  I had to spend a lot of time scraping the windows of the Hello Kitty duct tape, probably the most tenacious of the duct tape varieties.  There’s still 1 or 2 windows with duct tape at the tops of them, and my nephew still giggles over the blinds and duct tape every time he visits my house!

Next week, I’ll talk about my home office and the myriad of electrical issues!