How do you make a Venetian Blind? *Poke*

Last night, my dad taught me how to repair wooden blinds. The same thing may not work for the metal ones, but I'm imagining the principles are similar. Here's where we started:

Note the broken slats on the blind here. I have cats so I know blinds can get screwed up. At least, I knew metal blinds could get screwed up. Didn't really think these would be as easy to break, but there you go.

So, what to do? You could go spend $50-100 on a new set of blinds, but that would be silly. You will see that we have 4 broken slats, and at least a few extras down at the bottom. Installers almost always leave a few extra slats at the bottom, either because they anticipate the need to repair the blinds or because they figure you'll want the blind to sit down on the sill instead of hanging slightly above it. In any case, they're almost always there. Sometimes, like in our kitchen, you get about twice as many slats as you need and the stack of extras just sits on the will, mocking you. You'll get yours, kitchen window blind.

And this is how! Unfortunately, I forgot my camera again last night (seriously, two days in a row?) but I have it today so I should be able to get pictures of the appropriate pieces and explain all of this. Here's how a blind works.

Hopefully you can see that. There are three strands that go from the top to the bottom. I've omitted the slats and ladders to make this easier. I'll bring them back later. When you pull on the cord, the bottom of the blinds comes up. But why? I had no idea until I started poking around in there last night. Turns out that the line that goes from the top to the bottom is actually a loop. The path is from a knot in the top, all the way down the blind, then back up, then over to the side, then down to the handle. At the bottom, there are these little plugs, like this:

There's a little plastic wheel in there (bottom right) and the loop goes around it. When you pull the string, the loop that's over the wheel just sort of rolls and that's what pulls the blind up. I'm probably not explaining it well, but I'm trying. Really, it's not too complicated. The lines that lift and lower the blind are held in place with these plugs and wheels. The lines also pass through slits in the slats (getting confused yet?) and keep them from sliding too far to the left or right. The ladders hold the slats in place vertically and the lines hold them in place horizontally. It's really a neat system once you take a closer look at it.

Here's a diagram that may help:

In this drawing the red represents the slats (the wood part), the black represents the ladders (the supports) and the blue represents the lines (the pulling parts). The slats sit on top of the rungs of the ladders. You will have multiple ladders depending on how wide your blinds are. The lines go through the slits in the slats, and you can have 2-4 of these depending on how wide your blinds are.The strings look like they're all part of one structure, but they aren't. The strings going through the slits are completely separate from the ladders and serve a totally different function.

So, here's how you fix these blinds. You pop the plugs out of the bottom plate (make sure you don't use your little wheels) by sliding a putty knife blade under the edge and just working them out. They're tight, but they'll move if you wiggle them a bit. Now take a small flat-head screwdriver and pop out the wheels so you can pull the lines up. Pull your lines up (using the pull cord or just by pulling them out) to the slat above your damage. You should now be able to slide the damaged slat out one side or the other, then slide another slat out from the bottom and slide it into place where the damaged one was. Just pull the looped line back down through the slits in the slats (make sure to alternate which side of the ladder you put it) and then pull it back through the bottom plate. Slip it back over the wheel, put the wheel back in the plug and put the plug back in the blind. Easy, right?

Okay, I know this is almost entirely gibberish. Without pictures to show you what I'm talking about, this may be worse than useless. I'll see what I can do about it tonight though, and hopefully I can add pictures and clarity later. If you think you sort of get it but have questions, just let me know.

*Edit*

Here are some new pics that will helpfully do a better job of showing what I'm talking about. But first, there's this:

So pretty!

Here's the plug with the little wheel in it. You can't really see the little wheel very well because it's also white plastic but you can see the bronze post it sits on. That's what I was talking about.

This is the plug without the wheel in it. These also hold the remaining strands of the ladder in the bottom of the blinds after you cut them. make sure not to cut off too much because adding more on is going to be really hard, if not impossible.

Hopefully those helped!