I hate vertical blinds for so many reasons. They don’t keep sufficient light out. They’re noisy when they are closed and the window behind them is open, crashing together. They have sharp corners and gouge my son when he accidentally stands up under them. They break all the bloody time and nobody in my area fixes them or sells replacements.
I’m living in a rental. Is there any leverage that I have to get these goddamn things out of here, and replaced by something else like curtains, plantation shutters, or even mini-blinds?
It’s not hard or expensive to hang some basic curtains. You can store the blinds and put them back when you leave if your landlord wants that, but if you tell him you’ll do the work he might even rebate your rent for the cost.
Fire - you really don’t have any leverage to have the owner replace them, so as mentioned - the best thing you can do is take them down and put up a replacement. However, something I did several times was go 50-50 with the owners of places I rented if I did the work and put up something better such as shelving or when I wanted to do a special paint job. They won’t pay you, but would reduce your rent amount for some of the cost.
Ironically, we just replaced our living room and dining room drapes with…vertical blinds. Relatively high-end textured and sculpted color-coordinated blinds, but vertical blinds nonetheless. We did it because our dogs destroyed the drapes/curtains, and these are much easier for them to push aside safely to look out the windows. They actually do keep out enough light and look pretty cool too. Then again, they weren’t cheap, either.
