Let us say you go to open your vertical blinds and oh no, the blinds won’t open. The first thing to check for is any blind slats that are out of line with the others. Look for any that are overlapping the others the wrong way and push the top corner to set it the right way. This is the most often needed repair for vertical blinds. Blinds often get out of alignment due to wind, people, pets, vacuums, chairs etc…
A bigger problem is when one of the gears gets turned out of step with the other gears. The repair is performed by turning the stem the right way. Sometimes you can grab the stem and turn it with your hand. Take care not to bend the slat itself or it may break. Often you will need or want to remove the slat. That makes it easier to grab the stem with a pair of pliers and then pop it over.
This repair sometimes causes a gear tooth to break. Replacing stem gears is fairly easy and I will try to make a video for that repair in the future. I cover all of these repairs and much more in my book, Kung Fu Maintenance. I have another video at present titled The Master Blind Gear. I hope you like it and that it serves you well. It covers (as you probably guessed) how to replace a stripped master blind gear controller for vertical blinds.
Be extra careful when working with blinds and appliances as the metal is often unfinished metal and very sharp. I have given blood numerous times. A little precaution makes for a better day.
Today I’ve got a couple repairs to show you on vertical blinds going to split them into a couple videos this one I’m going to be converting to one but I’ll put that part on another video what I have to show you here is that got a broken clip and I can kind of hang something on there but it’s not really right here some of the show you what you can do if you didn’t have another clip over on this side I’ve actually got quite a bit of overlap on the wall and again I’m going to be getting rid of the chain in the cord anyways since the chords kind of a choke hazard what I’m going to do is recover the peg here from this side since it’s overlaps the wall considerably what am I do is hold this over with one finger and then pop it out like so and I want to make sure the teeth aren’t broken and there’s a little gear peace in here also I’m going to leave the gear piece in there in case we ever wanted to add another skin now on this side I’m again and hold it with one finger and pop it out and we’re going to look up in there and make sure the gear is still in there the comb gear and it is you can see that you’re there then I’m going to take my new blind piece and just snap it into place good to go anyway that’s how you can replace the blind gears and the stem and the gear inside if you need to it’s a little comb gear piece came out you can hold it in place with your peace and put it up together kind of all together and if these are out of Step you can can turn them by hand or with a pair of pliers anyway that’s how to repair blind gears and stems later that day got a flashlight video for you here today what I have is one stubborn blind gear everything turns except for this one what we going to do is replace the gear there what it has is this little comb gear right here and that one’s actually okay so we’re going to do is pop this one out now you can either pop the blind slat out so that you can pop this over but you want to examine the teeth here and make sure nothing’s broken off there and it does appear like one of the gear is one there and you can also look up at the comb to make sure that’s okay and that actually looks okay I don’t have another comb another of these stem gears with me what I’m going to do is spin this one around take it off at the blind slot and instead of putting that side in I’ll put the opposite side in first so I’ll clip it on like this and then press this into place here there we go at least now that one messed up gear is not sitting directly against the comb gear and everything does exactly what it’s supposed to do I just kind of got lucky on that one it doesn’t always work out that way if that happened to you and that one was critical for you to use what you might do is swap swapped out if you look at the other side like this one’s not covering anything on the window and just kind of over whopping the wall you might take the one stem from here instead and swap it with that one that’s a way to get through it instead of having to order a new one anyway that’s how to replace the cam gear and check for rotation make sure everything is working good and we’re all set they’re good to go.
If you got some blinds that need trimming down. The best way to do it is with a strong pair of scissors and keep the slats towards the back of the blades as you cut it. What you want to do is lean the edge that you are not going to cut up against the baseboard and than find the one that you want to cut to as a template and put your slats up against the baseboard. Like so so that everything is the same length and than you’ll be able to trim it to the correct length. Now these two were just a tiny bit long. So I am going to be trimming these two. Right here you can see how they are just a hair long. So just going to be trimming that off with my scissors here. It’s probably better to go one at a time. This one is not too long. For our second one here. That will give you a nice straight edge.
Here is the procedure if you don’t have scissors handy. Be aware using scissors is much better. Now I will show you a way that you can do it after if you don’t have a pair of scissors handy. That will be to score it first with a sharp knife. Than that way it won’t spit apart on you in the wrong area. Anyway that’s the best way to trim down blind slats to get a nice straight edge. If you got a blind slat that you need to trim down what you want to do is lean it up against the wall. The end that you don’t want to cut. The end that you do want to cut what you will do is use your other blind slat as a guide. The trick to breaking these off is to score it real good on both sides. So take a sharp knife. My knife is not to sharp. Probably needs some sharpening. But anyway. What you can do is score it along the edge there on both sides. That should allow you to get a nice even break. Like so. It’s not perfect but if you try to break it without that it’ll be all jagged on the edge. So that is how to score and break off a blind slat. Again using scissors is much better.
Kung Fu Maintenance shows new faux vertical blinds many different choice styles options video.
Faux Vertical Blinds
Alright. Check out all these options for vertical blinds. I didn’t even know they came in all these different styles but this is a fan deck of different options for vertical blinds that you can get. All these kinds of faux wood.
Sort of I wonder how these will hold up for cleaning wise. If they will attract a lot of dirt but still pretty neat in just all these different options for vertical blinds. Pretty cool huh.
Anyway, I need to find out how expensive these are. Curious. I can get a typical like a 104 inch vertical blinds for about fifty bucks. Fifty to Fifty five bucks somewhere in there. It just depends where you get ’em. Fifty to eighty bucks might be the spread there. For that size. Seventy eight inch wide vertical blinds probably about forty bucks. Forty to sixty dollars again just depending where you get them from.
You can get them on my website. Not sure if I have all these colors available though. It’s not really me. I just make a small commission on stuff you might order through there. But look at these. These are like a faux wood. Pretty nice. Options. Stuff to pick from. Pretty neat to. Little bit different for the windows.
Kung Fu Maintenance demonstrates a quick method you can use to get broken vertical blind slats vanes back up and blocking again.
Repairing Vertical Blind Slats
OK. If you’ve got a broken vertical blind slat and you don’t have another slat. Here is kind of a quick trick you can do.
Just to make do. Is to take a hole punch and what you are going to do is punch it twice. Twice or three times across the middle. Make a new place to hang it here. Making it nice and even and centered and than you can rehang your blind slat.
If you wanted to make it look nicer on the other end you can either use a piece of tape to cover that or you can trim it off straight with scissors but that is going to make this particular slat a little bit shorter. You can put it on the end slat so it is less noticeable. On the end of the blinds so it is less noticeable but anyway that will allow you to rehang the blind and get things back to doing what they should.
Getting Vertical ~ Repairing Vertical Blinds
So now I can just rehang the vertical blind slat where it is supposed to go and there we go. All set there. Just got the little bit on the bottom but it is really not going to show too much here.
One of the first things to check for when troubleshooting vertical blinds that won’t rotate.
Here is a set of blinds that won’t turn here.
Try to turn and nothing is turning. It is possible that these are just turned the wrong way.
Let me show you a quick way to go through and change these. These just a little push in the right spot. A tiny push at the top left corner of each one so that it rotates out here. Than we can check and possibly just someone turned these the wrong way.
This will be a fairly easy fix if that’s the case. And just going right along here OK and now this side I am not so sure that is the halfway point. The way these work is a little bit different so. OK it looks like those do need to be flipped also. So now I just have got to flip the other side there.
These blinds could use some cleaning to. Oh my goodness. It might be time for a new set just on that note alone. Anyway if you wanted to know how to fix it. Let’s see if that does the trick here. Yay. Blinds all fixed.
That window could use some cleaning to. At least the blinds work now. We’re all set there.
Kung Fu Maintenance shows you patio sliding glass door wheels changing video on a patio slider hard to use.
We got some sliding glass door wheels that are really hard to pull. If you listen for the bearing; hear that sound. That’s a sound indicating the bearings are bad on the wheels. What we need to do is lift the whole door up and pull it out from the bottom; sweep it out from the bottom. I’m going to lift the door up, pull it out, and then walk it down from the top.
Here’s the wheels; you can see that they’re pretty greasy. You want to avoid getting that grease on the carpet. Here are my new wheels. These are nylon wheels and they work really well, much better, actually, than these metal wheels. You would think the metal wheels would do better, but it just seems that these nylon wheels are so much easier. These aren’t the worst I’ve seen, but we’re going to replace them. Here we go.
On this side it’s really straightforward. First, you want to go ahead on this one, tighten. I like to tighten mine to about here; that seems to work really well for me. This set screw raises or lowers the door and allows you to pivot the door also. I just get mine preset depending on the door. If the door had given me a harder time to come out, I might actually lower the wheel first to make it easier to get the door back in, but this one was pretty straightforward. You want to get them pretty much equal. They’re already there.
On this side it’s pretty straightforward. You can see that the key anchor’s in here. I just pop these out with a screwdriver, like so. You just got to get them to meet there, give the screwdriver a little push, pop it right out. Again, try to avoid getting this stuff on the carpet. I’m going to take it and put it in the bag. On the other side what we have to do is remove this foot pin. It’s got a set screw underneath it. We just need to remove this bottom screw so that way it’s out of the way. The key on this side, it gets bent up inside; that’s the way this one gets anchored into place. You really want to have these anchored so they’re not moving around. Again, we’re going to take the screwdriver and just give it a little push to pop the wheel out. I’m going to grab this with my pliers, pull it out, and put it in a bag so I don’t get it all over anything. There we go. You can see how the key portion is bent up inside there. Let me show you that. Put this in a bag.
Here’s our new one. What you do is insert it up into the key just past the set screw, and then bend it into place. I usually just give this a little tap with my screwdriver to get it to anchor. We want the foot up above the trim. Take your foot bolt, put that back in there; it just slides up. We’re going to set our set screw in place. This should anchor just under the wheel. That’ll lock the wheel into place. If we need to adjust the wheel, we’ll have to remove that pin once it’s in place. I don’t want to tighten it down too tight, I want to tighten it down enough that I’ll be able to slip it off and up if I need to. We’re going to insert the other wheel, like so. It’s got its little key that it gets keyed into, get pushed into. Push it into place. Pretty straightforward. We’re ready to put our door back up.
What you do is set it at an angle close to your door so that you’ll clear your blinds and such. Up top, what we need to do is lift it up into the track and swing the bottom wheels in. We’re going to lift it up on both sides, and then we’re going to swing the bottom wheels in and drop it into the track. Up top, what we want to make sure is that no part of the door is coming out, that everything is staying inside there, along the whole run of closing the door. The next thing you want to check is that we have no gaps along the door when it’s closed. Then go ahead and check if our latch works properly, which it does. We’re going to check for smoothness of operation. Little bit rough up top; it could just use some lube up here.
Here’s our door latch. Everything latches good. We’re all set. Good to go, new patio wheels.
Kung Fu Maintenance demonstrates one nice little easy trick for repairing broken vertical blinds slats vanes. Use this one at your own risk as some blind slats may be more brittle than others.
So I found a kind of nice easy new way of doing these blind slats when I need to punch through the other side is I have got this little chisel tool that actually seems to work out just perfect for this. To punch right through just like so. Make my little hole and now I can rehang the blind slat and on the other side I can just trim it off with some scissors. But anyway it just seems to work out just right. Nice little easy trick. Good to go.
Kung Fu Maintenance shows how to fix vertical blinds vanes slats out of line.
Alright, Today I’ve got a nice easy one for you.
Got some blind vanes slats stems out of step here.
All you have got to do is grasp this and turn it.
If you can’t get a good handle on it what you can do is pop the slat out.
Than use a pair of pliers to turn it. Here I got two more.
Usually I find I can get it but I will show you how to do it with the pliers here on this one. Lift up on the back tab. By usually using the thumb and grab it with a pair of pliers. Pop it over.
Now I can reset the slat and test it out. Check for our full rotation.
Beautiful. And we are all set there. Good to go.
