You have measured for your skylight shades, you have received your brand new shades, now it is time to put it up. Umm - the first thing - you want to make sure that you have the proper tools ready. You will need a head
screwdriver, a screw gun if you have one handy, or, of course, you could always do it the old fashioned way, by hand and a pencil just for marking where certain things are going to go. Check that all your parts have come, with the parts list, that should be included with the skylight shade, and once you see that you have everything together, the first thing we will start with is mounting the side rails.
screwdriver, a screw gun if you have one handy, or, of course, you could always do it the old fashioned way, by hand and a pencil just for marking where certain things are going to go. Check that all your parts have come, with the parts list, that should be included with the skylight shade, and once you see that you have everything together, the first thing we will start with is mounting the side rails.
Each shade comes with two side rails, and the first rail will get mounted to the side of the box, and it really depends on you as far as how deep into the box you’d like to mount. In this particular installation, we’re going to mount the shade flush with the ceiling, and the sidetracks are pre-drilled, so that once you put the track in place, you simply just need to put the screws right through the side track, and into the side wall, which may be drywall, or in some cases it could be into the wood box - really depends upon your particular application – so, once you have your side rail installed, you’ll go to the next side rail, and always install your side rails with the wider portion facing down into the room. You’ll notice that there’s a smaller lip, and a larger-sized lip, and the larger-sized lip will always face you down into the room. That’s very important so that the shade doesn’t fall off the track when you’re operating the shade.
Okay – so we have our side rails in place, and the next part of the installation will be our top brackets. Okay? These are your brackets that hold the top rail in place; ah, depending upon the width of the skylight shade, you’ll either have 2 or 3 of these brackets, okay? The screw with the pointy side of this bracket will face down into the room, and the head screw will face up toward the sky - alright. You’ll put this bracket in place about half inch from the ceiling, if you’re doing the ceiling now, and all of this - exact specifications on where to mount these brackets, are included in the instructions, so, each installation may vary slightly - but one screw through the center of the bracket will secure the bracket in place.
And once the brackets are in place, the next thing that goes up will be the shade. So, the shade should be ready to go, unpacked – and you have your bottom rail, which is the portion that’s floating here on its own, and the very top rail, and the center rail, which is your floating rail, which is going to open and close the shade. So, the brackets we just installed are to mount the top rail.
Now, very carefully insert the sides of shade into the side tracks - and, you will have to angle the shade in order to get it in - okay - and do not apply too much pressure when you do this, or you could crack the guides on each end. So, once the shade is installed in the side tracks, push the shade up toward the mounting brackets – okay – and snap your top rail in place into the brackets - uh - even the shade top rail - even it out so that you have an equal amount of space on the left and right – and once you have that, you can secure the top rail by tightening up on those little head screws. Once your top rail is in place, you just need to secure the top rail by tightening the head screw on the back portion of the bracket. That will secure the top rail in place.
Once you’ve secured the top rail, the next step will be to secure the bottom rail. That’s the rail that’s sort of dangling right now in the middle of nowhere, okay? So we’ll grab hold of the bottom rail, and we’re going to place it at the very bottom and base of the skylight itself. Once we have it in place, make sure it’s evened out, it has an equal amount of space from left to right - this rail will get screwed directly into the frame of the skylight. Take one of your screws into the pre-drilled holes, and tighten down the bottom rail.
Once the bottom rail is secure, you’ll be able to test the functionality of the shade by grabbing the handle and moving the shade up and down. There are two very important adjustments – one is the tension adjustment of the shade, and the other is the equalizer – whether or not your shade is going down straight. The tension adjuster is a spring that you see right here in the bottom rail, okay? To increase the tension on shade, expand the spring and re-tie the knot in place; that will increase tension. To reduce tension on the skylight, remove the knot and retract the spring until the tension is acceptable.
If the skylight shade is not going up straight, there is an equalizer - that’s on the far left; it’s a head screw that locks the cord in place, based upon the placement of the floating rail. The floating rail is adjustable one way or the other, once that screw is loosened. So, what you need to do is to even out your rail so that it’s operating perfectly straight, and tighten down on that screw.
Once you have your rail equalized, and your tension set, test the shade, make sure it operates smoothly - and your very last step will be to place the filler strip in the bottom rail to hide all of the componentry - all of your screws and springs, all that stuff you don’t want to see – that’s what this strip is for. This strip gets placed inside the bottom rail to conceal all of the components.
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