Custom Blinds & Shades in Mebane, NC

Old South Mebane, the grid of numbered streets just south of downtown, went on the National Register in 2011. Its nomination dates the houses from about 1900 into the early 1960s, running from Queen Anne and Craftsman bungalows through Minimal Traditional cottages and Ranch houses. Most are wood frame, one to two-and-a-half stories tall, and the survey found one-over-one double-hung sash to be the favored original window.

A one-over-one sash with its original stops is friendly to an inside mount, provided the jamb is deep enough to clear the sash lock. The catch in a frame that has stood for a hundred years is that it may no longer be a rectangle. We take widths at the head, the meeting rail, and the sill, check both diagonals, and only then choose between an inside and an outside mount.

The same nomination notes that many of these houses now have replacement sash. A replacement unit set inside an old frame almost always leaves a shallower, narrower opening than the one the house was built with. That changes which headrails will fit, so if new windows are on your list, put them in first and have the treatments measured afterward.

Downtown is its own National Register district: about two blocks of brick commercial buildings along Center, Clay, Third, and Fourth streets, dating from the first six decades of the twentieth century. The nomination describes offices and apartments on the upper floors, the old live-above-the-shop arrangement. Upstairs windows in those buildings are set in solid masonry, and roller or Roman shades for them get built to the measured drop instead of being cut down from a catalog length.

Houses built in the last fifteen years are a simpler job. Their windows tend to repeat from room to room, which keeps a whole-house order straightforward. The questions there are usually about bedroom darkness and privacy toward the neighbors rather than about fit.