This tenant wants blinds, that tenant wants drapes...

[Sam Leon]

I typically invest in older buildings so when dealing with window treatment I always face this madness of multiple inferior installs.

Blinds with the brackets barely hanging, that are basically impossible to secure because the non-standard way windows are framed.  Sometimes you find furring wood strips if you are lucky, other times you have to use plastic anchors, sometimes you cheat and drill into metal corner beads, sometimes you mount the brackets from the top, sometimes on the side, wherever you find a way to bite into something.  Worst comes to worst you use Tapcon screws and go directly to the blocks or bricks.

Same issue with curtain rod brackets.  You may or may not find secure backing for it.

Then tenants seem to do chin-up on curtain rods and they tear the brackets off the walls.

So I have been trying to find a better solution for it.

This week I have a tenant moved out and I removed all of the blinds, curtains and hardware and this is what I came up with.  I did this in half a day with all seven windows in that unit.

I cut a piece of 1X4 and mount it on the underside of top side of the recessed window frame, using three 2-3/4" Tapcon screws from the bottom driven into the concrete blocks.  This piece of wood is the same length as the window's width.

Then I cut another piece of 1X4 eight inches longer than the window width, and mount it over the top edge of the window, onto the wall, forming a 90 degree angle with the piece recessed into the window.  It is also secured with 2-3/4" Tapcon screws into the blocks. It is 8" longer because it sticks out further on each side.

So the cross section is like this.

While the profile is like this.

The reasons I do this is I now have solid wood backing to mount blind brackets, AND solid wood backing to mount curtain rod brackets, and I am not going to be dealing with brackets yanked out of the sheetrock anymore.

I will probably provide both blinds and curtain rods on all the units I do this too.

Here is a picture.  Now I messed up on the stain because they came out a lot more "rustic" than I wanted, so I am not too happy with the "look", need to restain this and cover up the screw heads, but you get the idea.

This took me about 3.5 hours to do seven windows.

Thoughts?  Thumbs up, thumbs down?