Temporary Blackout Curtains and Painters Estimate

Give Tommy Welsch a call. He only uses Sherwin Williams paint and does an excellent job and without knowing anyone else's estimates have ALWAYS came in the lowest. We have referred him to well over 12 different people and every single one of them have been extremely happy with his job and were amazed at how cheap he charged. Because his rates are so much lower than the rest of the quotes, we have always given him a pretty big tip (and with tip included, we still saved a lot of money over the price of what others would have charged).

His number is ###-###-####. He is very professional and doesn't make a mess.

Frankly, for something temporary, just use thumbtacks and bath towels. (I'm sorry, I don't know how large your windows are... that may not work if the windows are large. If you need something larger, just use a blanket.) The thumbtack hole will be easy to cover.. paint may be enough to fill that in.

I hung a towel over a window in the utility room (in the door that leads to the backyard, but we don't use that door), and it is amazing how much cooler it is! The door is metal, so I just used tape.

I would just put 2 small nails in each corner of the window and hang up a throw or a towel to keep the light out.

Sorry, I do all my own painting.

kmart, I ordered paper blackout shades from them online they come in a pack of 4 for $25, they attach with a sticky tape strip at the top. you can put them on the metal part of the window frame or i have storm windows where there are 2 windows & so i put mine inside between the two.

Meijer has some great bold-colored curtains especially for kids rooms with black-out backing, if you're wanting something that you can use longer-term. I would just go ahead and install them- save wasting money, time, effort, and throwing something out that you only used for a short while. Brackets for curtains aren't hard to patch if you want to move them and paint over later.

tape up black trashbags.

Home Depot and Lowes both sell paper black out curtains as a temporary solution. I can't remember the exact cost, but they were very inexpensive and can be cut to order.

If you want something very temporary and very easy, use foil on your son's window. You can smooth it on the glass and tape it to the frame. We did this in my girls' room when they were infants - the room had transom windows about 1.5 stories up that let in tons of light that we wanted to block. Then when we moved to our current house we used foil for several months until we found the curtains we wanted.

Walmart has fairly inexpensive room darkening curtains that I used for my daughter's room. They worked great.

Not sure about the curtains. Target has some curtains you could try, but I'm not sure how cost-effective it would be for the short term.

With regard to paint, you're better off seeing if you can arrange a time with the realtor to meet a few contractors at the house before closing. I'm a construction project manager and I can tell you that with paint, it is very difficult to estimate a project without seeing it AND knowing what paint colors you want used. "A few different shades" could be anything - different colors for the wall vs the ceilings? Are there chair rails, picture rails, baseboards? Is there molding around the windows, or just drywall? Is the existing paint a semi-gloss, or matte? (Makes a difference, because anything semi-gloss or gloss that you want to be satin or matte finish will need primer first.) Assuming the least possible amount of work, I'd say you're in the ballpark of $10K for a house that size, but you could be at $15K if there's a significant amount of detail work. In any case if you know your closing date, get your bids NOW and get the work scheduled. Any contractor who's any good will need as much notice as possible to get the work scheduled, if you have specific dates when it needs to happen.

Best of luck to you in your move!

We have roller black out shades underneath our wood blinds and the fabric blinds in our DD's room. They are easy to get at Walmart and pretty cheap. They will just go right in place of what you currently have, just make sure you get the DARKEST ones that they sell and you'll be very happy. There are better ones out there, but these have worked just fine for us for years.

the best and cheapest way to get the room dark is to buy industrial strength velcro (you only need the scratchy side, get the adhesive back kind) and heavy black felt. Buy 2 layers of the felt so that it will be 12 inches wider and loner then the window dimensions. Now all you have to do is stick up the velcro at the top of the window and then stick the felt to the velcro. It works SO great it is ALL I use in our bedrooms. We love darkness for sleeping.