Hot Tip: Trim Cellular Shades to the Perfect Size

I knew from the moment I bought my home that I’d want top down/bottom up window treatments. I don’t want folks being able to look in my windows, nor do I want to necessarily look at my neighbor’s roof. So, the task was to find shades that fit. For most of the windows, I made do with mounting them on the outside of the windows (partially to accommodate the cats wanting to sit on the sills). But one window was a really odd size and I didn’t want to spend nearly $200 to cover it. So, for nearly two years, it has worn a temporary paper shade. Sad, but true.

I finally found a size on sale that would fit the window, in a bit of an odd color (gold…but hey, I’ll work with it!). When it arrived, it was a quarter inch too wide to be mounted inside the window. I started to think, “can I trim these like I would with regular wooden or plastic blinds?” I only found one message board that described using a miter saw (more of a chop saw) to cut these blinds, but most folks failed and tore the fabric either using the miter saw or a handheld saw. I have a table saw, so I thought I’d be the guinea pig and either succeed or fail big. I figure you’re better off with a blade that’s moving quickly rather than leaving it up to chance with a hand saw. Well, as you can see from the photo below…it worked really well!

I removed the caps on the end I planned to cut, used painters tape to secure the shades tightly in place and measured a gazillion times to be sure (using the edge of the tape as my cutting line). Then, I carefully ran them through my table saw. I took the quarter inch off one side, because taking 1/8″ off each side seemed just plain crazy. I figured at that small amount, it didn’t really matter. But to think, if I had returned them and custom ordered blinds that fit, it would have cost at least $150 more than what I spent ( $50 on sale at JC Penney ).

(Images: Blind Faith Windows and Michelle Chin)