We’ve just moved in, and the to-do list will never be finished. Every room has a problem, every problem has a price, and with interest rates doing what they’re doing, I am buying like a woman with a spreadsheet and a conscience. Made-to-measure window coverings are frighteningly expensive at the best of times, and our windows are big. We have two rooms where the owners blinds they left us don’t even work. So we are using sleep masks to survive. We trek through a few showrooms, nod politely at a lot of fabric, and walk out with our eyes spinning and our wallets intact. So we leave it. For a while.
Sleep is health and no amount of optimism is going to fix it. We decide on a change and go for curtains. And I discover that, for someone who has never bought curtains in her life, the choices are absolutely mind-boggling. That’s how I end up at DIY Blinds, who, it turns out, do a lot more than blinds.
DIY Blinds. Who Are They?
DIY Blinds started as a side project. Co-founder Evan Montero couldn’t get a straight quote for a small blinds job at his parents’ house, which is a feeling I now know intimately. He and Liam Dobson built a digital-first answer to the problem, left their finance careers in 2017 to run it full time, and started with roller blinds before adding shutters, curtains and motorisation.
The pitch is simple: designer-looking made-to-measure window furnishings without the showroom mark-up, ordered online and made locally in Melbourne. They say more than 77,000 Australian homes have used them, and they’ve been named Product Review’s Best Blinds & Shutter Shop six years running.
The First Step – Order the Swatches
I love the fact that our first step is picking a few different options of materials that we like online, and they post us the swatches. Within a week, I have more than 15 of them spread across the floor like a very serious paint chart. Mr G and I do the only sensible thing and hold every one up to the window. Mavro in Ebony is gorgeous but too dark. Mavro in Charcoal is nice, but it’s just not blue enough. Then we hold up Belmore in Bluestone and, bingo. A heads up on cleaning.. These are not machine washable. It’s a gentle vacuum with a soft attachment, spot clean with care, and an annual professional clean.
Sadly if you want patterns, or blinds as art, there are not any options. Everything here is a single colour or a texture, so if you want something bold or creative, this isn’t the place for you. Blue is a small corner of the range, there wasn’t a royal or dark blue, so that’s something to bare in mind.
Online Ordering & Set Up
Here’s where DIY Blinds alternatively holds my hand or loses me. Mr G and I are at the computer as we decide it all! I click ‘Build Now’ and the website walks me through seven stages, one decision at a time. For someone who has never bought curtains before, it’s the difference between a maze and a maze guide!
Stage one is the product. There are more types of curtain than I knew existed: double, lined, curved, box and bay, and more. Stage two is fabric, where you choose between sheer and blockout, or sheer and dimout. We’ve known all along that we want blockout. Stage three is colour, which is a done deal thanks to our swatch session.
Stage four is measurements, and this is the one that makes my palms sweat. Get it wrong and I’ve got a very expensive, blue mistake. There’s a how-to-measure video starring a lady on roller skates, which I assume is there to make measuring fun. It’s charming, but doesn’t help much. When I’m standing on a chair with a tape measure, I don’t want to hit pause, rewind and start again. The written step-by-step instructions are far easier to follow.
The real question is how much of the wall we want covered. We want the curtains to take up almost the full length of it. If you just want them to frame the window, it’s easy: add an extra 200mm past the frame. Yep, got that. But we’re going with a centre-opening stack, so we’re told to add 40% to the window width. Since we want them just off the floor, the curtains are 5 to 10mm shorter than our drop measurement.
Stage five is the fitting type. Do we want them mounted from the ceiling or face fit? We go ceiling, and the site helpfully shares what’s trending, so my rule is that when in doubt, I follow their recommendation. Ceiling mount, it turns out, pairs beautifully with S-fold. Which sounds like a yoga move to me, but I’m in.
Stage six is the curtain itself, starting with the stack: slide left to right, right to left, open in the centre, or part in multiple places? We go with the centre. Then come the headings, and I had no idea this was even a thing. Pencil pleat, triple pleat and double pinch pleat all take me straight back to my mum’s house in the 80s. Hard no. Instead there’s the fold of the moment, the S-fold, which gives a gentle wave. Then the finish: do we want them pooling on the floor, or just off it? Off the floor, with a standard hem.
Stage seven is the track. Because we’ve gone with S-fold, the recommended option is the Designer S-fold track for ceiling mount, and we choose white over black or silver. We also add a clear wand, so we can draw the curtains without grabbing the fabric.
Then I add my credit card details and my address, press the button, and cross my fingers.
The Build & Communication
The wait is a nervous one. DIY Blinds keeps me in the loop with a run of emails over the next couple of weeks: they’ve got the order, it’s being made, it’s nearly ready, it’s been dispatched. Each one is a tiny hit of relief. Then, within a few weeks, the curtains turn up.
Up until now, it’s been easy. But the next part involves a drill, a stud finder and a few other bits and pieces, and that feels a little above my DIY skills. So we call in Mr G’s dad, Phil, an excellent DIYer, and I am so glad we do. He arrives with his power drill and decades of experience. We have a step ladder, a pencil (yes, you need a pencil), and a list of everything required, including a Phillips head drill bit, which is the cross-shaped one.
Then comes the item I’ve never heard of in my life: the stud finder. It turns out there’s timber hiding in your walls and ceilings, and that’s where we want to screw into, because it holds the weight. Who knew? A quick trip to Bunnings and we have one.
We have laid everything out as they say and its hear that I wish for a 30-second video per section instead of a static picture. A bit of trial and error and a bit more help from Phil, and we get there.
Our DIY Fail
The stud finder, as it turns out, isn’t the easy part. Our stud finder is very confused. But we go with it. Finding the studs, marking them in pencil and getting everything set up is by far the hardest bit of the whole job. We measure them 600mm apart, and once the screws are in, we realise we’ve drilled too close to the wall. Our windows have a wooden frame around them, which means we need the curtains to hang a little further from the wall. So we have to take them all out one by one. There is a quite a bit of swearing.
The brackets go into the ceiling first, and then the track clicks into them. The track is long, so Mr G and I hold it up while Phil does the clicking in. It takes some trial and error and, let’s be honest, a bit of brute force, before it finally snaps into place. We definitely need two people, and a third pair of hands turns out to be very handy. I would also say a second step ladder for any ‘assistants’ holding things.
Then we clip the curtain panels into the hooks on the track and shape the S-fold as we go. You find a rhythm, folding the fabric forwards, then backwards, building that gentle wave one pleat at a time. Mr G is far better at it than I am. We attach the glass wands.
Two and a half hours in, mostly because we couldn’t find the studs, it’s done. It should be 35 minutes. I recon that’s a ninja Airtasker! We definitely acknowledge the 2nd one would be much quicker given our user error!
The Big Reveal – WOW!!!
We attach the clear wand, step back, and sit down to admire the room. And it’s all worth it.
The curtains are absolutely stunning. The fabric is the thing I keep coming back to. Belmore has a raw, matte, dry-textured finish. Bluestone is a soft slate blue with grey-green undertones, and it’s piece dyed, which gives it a subtle sheen and a two-tone depth you only notice up close. Behind it is a three-pass coated blockout backing, which is what keeps the morning out. It’s fire retardant rated and Oeko-Tex certified, and it’s 100% polyester.
Not only do they look amazing the block out is INSANE!! After months of sleeping with eye masks the room not only looks beautiful but our lives and health is improved.
The Verdict
I couldn’t be more excited, or happier, with the whole experience. It takes some muscle and some patience, but for a house move that’s costing us a fortune everywhere else, this is one of the best things we’ve done.
What Are We Addicted To?
The room, the price. It looks completely different, and the fabric is beautiful, with a pretty weave that catches the light and colours that play off our paintings and the sky outside. We’ve spent $1,500 on a few things in our time, but I don’t know that anything will last or look as luxurious as these. The swatches by post are a genuine thrill. when you can’t decide, and the seven-stage build holds your hand.
What Do We Need To Be More Addicted?
Shorter video, step-by-step videos for each stage, instead of one roller-skating video that doesn’t go into the detail you need. More choice on fabrics and patterns. Whilst the measuring is easy the DIY install does need a solid base of skills. If you don’t have them, you could get an Airtasker in to help with the install, and because you’ve done the measuring yourself at the front, it’s still way, way cheaper than going through a company that does it all for you.
$1,500 for our big windows, made to measure. Available at diyblinds.com.au.