Window treatment dilemma

We seriously dislike our current window treatments, but we may be stuck with them for a while.

We plan to take down the aluminum mini blinds in the living room and family/dining room and opt to use nothing at all there, since the landscaping and the angle that the house sits on the lot afford us enough privacy for bare windows in those common areas.

But the bedrooms are another story. Those windows, for obvious reasons, need to be covered. My bedroom and the boys' bedroom have old white roller shades...so old that they won't roll anymore. Besides the fact that they aren't functional, they're just plain ugly...the strictly utilitarian type used in schools. The master bedroom has plastic mini blinds, which are only slightly better. At least they work.

White vinyl roller shades in my bedroom

More white vinyl

We had someone come out and measure all the bedroom and bathroom windows for an estimate on custom roman shades, my daughter's first choice. I think she was genuinely shocked when the bid came in at $7000+ for the shades plus installation. When we said that was more than we wanted to spend, they offered us a discounted price of $5000. Still no deal.

I suggested that we check SelectBlinds, an online company I had used several years ago when I purchased wood blinds for a previous home. I was happy with their service, as well as the quality of the blinds, and I knew they would be significantly less expensive.

By deciding on a modern roller shade with a cassette-style headrail that we could install ourselves, we were able to get the price down to the $1500-2000 range. This image from the SelectBlinds site gives you an idea how they would look.

Textured roller shade in Crystal Truffle
selectblinds.com

Just as we were about to place the order, my daughter backed out, because she started to have serious reservations about the color we had chosen.

You see, all our bedrooms have the original golden oak hardwood floors with a slight reddish tint...not quite as red as teak, but definitely not a neutral gold. We had picked a color that coordinated with that flooring. The problem is that my daughter wants to have the floors refinished a darker color at some time in the future, so she wanted to order more samples and try to find something that would look good now and later. The "later" may be a few years, but she couldn't justify even a $2000 outlay for something that would have to be replaced when the floors are redone, and she is certainly right about that.

We ordered a dozen new samples, and we received them a few days ago. We tentatively narrowed it down to these two:

Select Blinds Sweet Tea

Good Housekeeping Gingersnap

I'm currently leaning in the direction of the Sweet Tea, because I think it has enough colors present to look good with almost any floor color. Also, it provides slightly more privacy than the other shade. My daughter still can't make up her mind and may want to order more samples. Therein lies the dilemma. Which one do you like?

Former glory

We thought we had beige/brown terrazzo. Of course, we knew it needed to be cleaned, because it has obvious grimey build-up around the walls that mopping won't remove, but we were shocked when we found out that it was originally white...and could be again.

The representative of a local stone restoration company came out to do an estimate, and he gave me a demonstration of what to expect from their services. He asked me to show him the spot in the house where the floor is in the worst condition, so I pointed him in the direction of a group of 9 tiles near the back door that I thought were damaged and covered with 66 years' worth of wax (and who knows what else). He sprayed some Mar-Tek Pro-Strip on one tile, scrubbed it with a brush, and toweled the area dry. Here's what resulted.

Stripped terrazzo tile

He was almost as surprised at the dramatic difference as I was. This tile was put down 66 years ago. Who knows how long it's been since this floor was stripped and honed? Maybe never.

His estimate: $2422. Naturally, we'll be getting other bids, but this is definitely on our Must Do list.