My bathroom window is in the shower! It is a full sized window. I hung a white plastic opaque shower curtain, doubled with the fold facing the shower head, over it. I can move the curtain aside because the spring rod is the full length of the tub. We do also have film on the bottom half of the window, and a big shrub outside. I would like some of those bottom top blinds too in various places in my house, but it never occurred to me to try to retrofit regular blinds. To buy bottom-tops new is quite expensive. If any one knows how to do it, I'd love to hear it. BTW, I have friends who have them, and its kindof a disappointment to realize that the strings that raise and lower the blinds cover the window all the time, so you don't really get an unobstructed view. Excuse my going on and on, but you have got me thinking about mounting a shade onthe bottom and pulling it upwards which wouldnt work well in a shower however. But that would just involve one string up the middle of the window where we have a muntin anyway. Good luck. Kathy

I think SOME miniblinds like those plastic ones - UGH! - are utterly wretched, but others aren't so bad, like wood ones in particular are not dated at all. We had wood 1" blinds in our previous house's master bedroom and even though I'm not really a blinds person they did look nice. We have a bay window 6 feet from the sidewalk in our current house and I put up 2" wood blinds, which do look very good and will look even better once we get those dadratted drapes up with them to soften the total effect! Whether 1" or 2" work better depends on your room. Our current windows are quite large and 1" blinds would have looked super busy IMO, as well as being a bit scrawny for the depth of the window casing. The casings were quite shallow in our previous house, so 1" blinds fit those windows better. The 2" ones do let in a lot of light when open, because the spaces between the slats are wider, and it's nicely possible to tilt them at just the right angle that people can't see in from the street but light still comes in. Because it was a big hassle to get at the middle window of the bay (we would be climbing over a chair and table to reach the cords) we sprung for the motorized tilt option on that one so it would ever get opened/closed at all. I am going to disagree with some other folks: extremely functional as they may be, I think the top-down blinds look a little odd from the outside - I think they're best on the sides or rear of a house, not "in your face" right in front. Maybe if you're in a very contemporary building, I don't know. If the view in from the street is only through the lower half of the window (I'm guessing typical double-hungs) and the style suits your decor and architecture, shutters that only cover the lower sash are efficient and attractive. They completely block visibility from outside and still allow generous amounts of light in through the top half of the window, so there would be no hassle with opening and closing a window treatment.

I'm sorry I ordered them. Are you talking about mini-blinds or cellular shades? We got cellular shades for the LR and the place we ordered online had a free upgrade to top-down-bottom-up. I thought, why not? Maybe we'll use that feature. But we NEVER do, and it creates a whole extra set of control strings (both sides of the window) and therefore the ugly hardware cleats and stuff you need to corral them. I guess if you have drapes on both sides hiding them, no big deal. We don't, though. Now I wish I had gotten the no-strings type instead! Oh, well... Not going to replace $700 worth of shades!

Mini-blinds can be shortened so their overall height is less, and usually the slats can be cut to a slightly shorter length as well, depending on what they're made of. You might be able to shorten some of the slats that go beside the AC and still have them in the blind. A lot depends on how many cords you have that go down through the blind (for example, how wide is the blind?), and how many of those cords are in the blinds beside the AC. Then even if you shorten some of the slats, you'd still have to figure out how to have the heavy bottom rail divided into 2 lengths. Possibly can be cut, but you'd need something to finish off the ends of it at each height. I'm sorry I don't have time to draw a diagram, but if you've shortened any of yours, you may understand what I mean. Good luck!