Five hours to fit a Venetian Blind

[John]

Ordered and received a 175cm x 125cm (drop) black 2.5cm slat blind to fit a front window recess. All geared up and ready to fit in an hour. Drilled

5 holes through the sophit at the top of the recess, but some felt as though there was no hard plaster behind. Tried several positions and some of the better ones fell inline with the mechanism inside the blind, so no good. After much up and down on my 3 step stool, I decided to use an existing hard wood battern, previously used for curtains. I was then able to fit the blind very securely, but 7.5cm short of full closure.

[Andy Bennet]

The joys of Catnic lintels!

[newshound]

Much to be said for fitting a batten in the right place first. Something I do regularly in my old house with rubble stone walls and lath and plaster internal walls (with studwork all over the place).

[Roger Hayter]

Why not hang either multiple metal strips or a sheet of thin metal from the batten to the height you want and fix the blind to it with nuts and screws (or self-tappers in the case of the metal sheet)?

[The Natural Philosopher]

RealMen? use their SDS drills to chisel out the plaster, then fit a batten where its needed and plaster over and repaint..

These days I assume that ANY mods to anything plaster related will result in this so I don?t get upset when they do.

I need to extend Ethernet to the kitchen. The nearest point is an unused socket in the spare room diagonally next to where the Ethernet is needed. Or in the bedroom above, but damned if I rip up the carpet and floor, so its gonna be a long drill after removing a whole section, and since that will be part of that rooms redecoration, I'll fill up the hole where The Ethernet socket was after extending the CAT 5....with plaster and bits of screwed up newspapers.

PS it's 'soffit', and 'batten'...