The replacement of cord for blinds is one of the most common repairs.
Cords often break as the result of normal wear and tear or from exposure to the sun. They can also be damaged through repeated contact with a damaged or defective part on the blind or shade itself.
The repair is easy and inexpensive.
It's likely that your blind or shade still has a lot of miles left in it and you can save quite a bit of money by taking the time to do this simple repair.
There are some differences between brands, but the basic procedures remain pretty much the same. If you pay attention when you take the blind or shade apart, you won't have any trouble putting it back together again.
This video shows you how to restring a Hunter Douglas Duette honeycomb shade.
Inspect the cord guides and cord lock for excessive wear.
This is one topic that deserves much more emphasis than it receives in the video.
If your shade has defective or damaged parts that come into contact with your new replacement cords it won't be long before the cords are broken again. You won't be happy when that happens.
Now is the time to perform a thorough inspection of the old parts to identify and replace all of the bad ones while you already have the shade taken apart. Here are some things to look for....
Damaged shade cord guides.
The video shows a shade cord guide with a small amount of wear where the blinds cord has cut into the plastic of the guide during normal operation. With the shade in the video, rotating the guide so that the cord runs over a smooth, undamaged surface is a good idea. However, sometimes the damage is more severe than that.
Here are some photos of shade cord guide damage from a repair that I did last June. The cord shown is a new one that was installed just for the purpose of taking these photos. The old cord was no longer available.
In this case the cord has cut so far into the guide that the part had to be replaced. The important thing to remember about this is that while the cord was cutting into the guide, the guide was also cutting into the cord and probably had a lot to do with the failure. If you try to reuse a part like this there's a chance that your new blind cord repair job won't last very long.
Damaged Cord Guide - Top View - Click to Enlarge
Damaged Cord Guide - Side View - Click to Enlarge
If you look closely at these photos, you will see that the cord had started cutting into the shade fabric too.
On this shade a thin aluminum strip similar to a mini blind slat was used as a stiffener inside the first pleat and the cord cut right through that as well. Even though it is only 0.9 mm in diameter, that nylon blind cord is some tough stuff.
Here are some more photos showing how the cord cut into that thin strip of aluminum. The first photo shows the strip removed from the shade so you can better see what's going on. The second photo shows the bottom side of the stiffener as it came out of the shade.
Damaged Cord Guide & Stiffener - Click to Enlarge
Damaged Fabric Stiffener - Click to Enlarge
Damaged cord locks.
The video doesn't really touch on this, but damaged cord locks are much more common than damaged cord guides. Be sure to inspect yours carefully when you have it out on the workbench.
Here are some photos of examples of what you might expect to find. These cord locks are all from Hunter Douglas Duette cell shades, but many brands use this same style of cord lock and experience the same kind of wear. I'm sure you can see that if you were to start dragging your brand new replacement cord through one of these old grooves that it might not last too long.
Undamaged Cord Lock - Click to Enlarge
Damaged Cord Lock - Click to Enlarge
And here's one that's really pretty extreme. I only show it because it's so impressive just how strong nylon blind cord really is. All the more reason to protect your children or pets from becoming entangled in it. Be careful with this stuff, it's surprisingly strong and it can be dangerous.
Extreme Damage Cord Lock - Click to Enlarge
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