American in Spain

What Grandma bought me for Christmas

July 18, 2006

Last Christmas, my grandmother gave equal amounts of money to Marga and me with the instructions to purchase "something for our new house". It only took us 6.5 months to do so... Besides fixing the bathtub, this really is the only money we've spent improving the house. The furniture left from the previous owners is sufficient for our needs, and we're either too lazy or too frugal to upgrade.

However, one thing has been bothering us. We have no way to prevent light from entering (or leaving) our dining room through our angled "velux" windows. This type of window has become very popular around this region, and the market for shades and blinds for them is doing quite well too. There's a store in town that deals only with this kind of window. So we went there and bought some simple translucent shades. They were almost completely covered by my grandmother's donation.

Sunlight entering the dining room hasn't really been an issue until now. There's almost no domestic air conditioning in Spain, so blocking sunlight is an important way of keeping the house cool. CIMG1974.JPG

Open.

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Half closed, or half open, depending on your outlook on life.

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Completely closed. It passed the light threshold that made the auto flash go off.

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They fit perfectly.

I timed the guy that installed them. It took him less than 15 minutes to install them for both windows. It was so fast that they even dropped the installation charges.

Thanks Grandma!!