My husband and I were adamant do-it-yourselfers with our first house. We painted walls, installed ceiling fans and light fixtures, replaced door hardware, landscaped the backyard and finished off our garage. There was one house project we fell miserably short on completing. Installing wood blinds throughout our house. This was one time we knew we were in over our heads and called the professionals.

After moving in, this was one of the first projects we tackled for a number of reasons, the most obvious being privacy. However, we also wanted to keep our electricity bills down and keeping out the summer sun would help. And of course, I had watched all the home improvement shows informing me about the importance of window treatments.

We carefully measured all the windows in our house, and headed to the local hardware store to purchase our blinds. To our surprise, the windows in our living room, kitchen and two in the dining room were unique sizes and required special order blinds. Of course, this increased the cost of the blinds. My husband and I, both a little apprehensive about our blind installation abilities, decided to hold off on ordering the blinds until the others were installed. This was our first good decision.

The second good decision, we opened only one package of blinds making them easy to return. We marked with a pencil where the brackets and screws should go. Then, we struggled attempting to mount the first bracket. We tried for an inside style mount, but ran into trouble trying to fasten the screws. After several attempts, we successfully installed one screw on the first bracket. However, we had stripped two of the screws that came with the set.

By this time my husband was completely frustrated with the entire project and kept blaming the failure on his tools. I thought it was more the user and suggested he take a break. Then, I gave it a shot. I ran into much the same trouble. It felt like we were trying to screw into concrete. The screws wouldn’t budge and kept slipping from the screwdriver bit when pressure was applied. We continued for another two hours with little success. We did manage to successfully attach one bracket, but after three hours and having zero blinds hung, we decided to give in. The blinds had won.

The next day, I called a local window treatment company. To my astonishment, the quote for installation and blinds was less than what we could purchase them for. The third good decision became easily apparent; pay someone else to install the blinds. Within a matter of 45 minutes my entire house had blinds. What I had failed to do after three hours of attempting, a professional did in a matter of minutes. It was at that point I realized there were some things I couldn’t do and a professional would be necessary.