HOW TO STOP A BAMBOO BLIND/SHADE FROM BEING SEE THROUGH

New bamboo blind shade, no longer see through.

Please excuse how the courtyard looks, it's the end of a stormy winter and still too cold to temp me out to tidy it.

I needed a new kitchen blind (or shade if you're in the US) and found a dark wood bamboo blind for £5 in a charity shop/thrift store, brand new and still in it's packaging.

Hung it in my kitchen window, then realised just how see through a bamboo blind, even a darker shade one is, especially at night when the lights were on.

So I tried this and it worked, and cost nothing as I just used things I had around the house.

What I did.

Added a lining to the back - I'd bought a medium grey fitted sheet from TK Maxx a while ago and it came with a flat sheet in the pack.

A flat sheet for anyone under 70 who has never worked in a hotel or a hospital, is a bed sheet but without the elastic to hold it around the mattress.

I measured the width and length of the blind, and cut the sheet to this size.

As the sheet was thin I could just do a single little cut at the size I wanted, then tear the fabric apart from there.  This gives a straight cut without the faff of having to measure and draw lines.

I then hemmed the edges by just turning the raw edges over by about half a centimetre, twice and machining them into place, you could probably do that with glue if you don't sew.

I then laid this flat on to the reverse of the blind then rolled it up from bottom to top.

Then starting at the top, painted the back of the blind with standard PVA glue

(the type you get for kids crafts, costs about £1 for 500ml). 

Just painting about 20cm at a time then rolling the sheet fabric down on to it and pressing and smoothing into place,

So you are painting strips of the back of the blind then rolling the fabric on to it.

Left it to dry, the glue dries clear.

Hung it back up and it still rolled back up perfectly.

Looks nice on the back to when hung up, again please ignore the state of the court yard in the window reflection, it is photographing way worse than it actually is.

And here it is at night, taken from the outside looking in, you can see how light it is in the kitchen by how light the side wall is showing where the side gap is and how little light is showing through the actual blind, the row of light dots are festoon lights I have outside reflecting in the glass.

It worked way better than I expected, the first pic at the top of this post shows how it looks finished, in day light.

A new kitchen blind for £5 and I don't want to appear hair shirt, and it definitely doesn't look hair shirt but...

no new resources used, nothing wasted, money to really good local charity.