Twenty minutes on the floor. Then the sun is somebody else's problem.
Two phases. You build the frame on your carpet, then you seal it into the window. Nothing is drilled, nothing is cut, and every part you need is already in the box.
Four things to do before you open anything
Two minutes now saves ten laterThe frame is anodized aluminum. A bare floor will mark it before it ever reaches the window.
Every box is cut for one window. If you ordered several, the sticker on the end tells you which room it belongs to.
Rubbing alcohol, not soap. The adhesive holds to paint and wood without complaint. It does not hold to dust.
It is the last thing you peel, not the first. It keeps fingerprints off the one face people actually look at.
What is in the box, and what each piece is for
Lay all nine pieces out and count them before you start. If something is missing, we ship the replacement the same day and you can stop reading here.
Something missing or marked? Photograph the box label and mail post@ludviken.com. No form, no ticket number.
Build the frame
Six steps, no tools, roughly ten minutes. Do all of it sitting down, away from the window. The frame is much easier to handle finished than half-built.
Two long, two short. Put the long pair on the left and right, exactly where they will sit in the finished frame, and keep the pre-drilled ends facing up.
One short rail has a shallow grip milled into it. That one goes at the bottom, because it is what you pull on every morning. The other goes at the top.
Line the pin up with the socket and push straight in, not at an angle. You will hear it. If you are pressing hard enough to worry, the pin is crooked.
Measure both diagonals. When the two numbers match, the frame is square, and a square frame is the difference between a clean edge and a thin line of daylight.
The tensioner sits in the head of one side rail. Turn it in small increments and watch the fabric: the honeycomb should hang flat with no slack ripple, and no more than that.
Push each cap in flat with your thumb until it sits level with the rail. The caps lock the joint, so the frame stops flexing the moment the last one is in.
Seal the window
Six more steps and another ten minutes. Everything from here is adhesive, so read each step before you peel it. Once a strip is down it stays down.
Lift a hand's width of the paper and leave the rest attached. Peeling the whole length first is how the strip ends up glued to itself.
Work along one side, pressing with your thumb and peeling the next stretch only when you reach it. Keep the bristles pointing into the opening.
It ships as one double length joined along a thin seam. Pull the two halves apart by hand. No knife, and no need to measure anything.
One half per side, seated in the groove that runs the length of the rail. This is the layer that turns a close fit into a sealed one.
Pinch the strip into a small fold and carry it around the turn in one piece. A cut corner leaves a gap the width of a blade, which is exactly wide enough to see.
Set the frame into the opening top first, then push the bottom in until the weather strip compresses along all four sides. Now take the film off the logo. You are finished.
Close the door and give your eyes two minutes
Do this in daylight, not at night. Shut the door, sit down, and wait. Your pupils need roughly ninety seconds to adjust, and until they have, any room looks dark.
After two minutes, look at the four edges of the frame. You are looking for a line, not a glow. If you find one, it is almost always the bottom rail sitting a few millimetres proud, and pressing it in fixes it.
Five things that go wrong, and what to do about each
The frame is sitting slightly out of the opening on that side. Take it out, press the weather strip firmly into its channel along that rail, and set it back in top first. If the line survives that, the frame is out of square: recheck the diagonals from step 4.
Pull it apart and look at the pin. Nine times out of ten it went in at an angle and the cord is pinched behind it. Free the cord, line the pin up square, and push straight in. Force never helps.
Too much tension on one side. Back the tensioner off completely, let the honeycomb settle for a minute, then take it up again a quarter turn at a time until it is flat and no further.
Almost always a surface problem, occasionally a cold one. Wipe again with alcohol and let it dry fully. Below about 60°F the adhesive needs a warm room and an hour before it reaches full grip.
Stop and mail us before you modify anything. It was cut for the measurements on your order, so either the window is not square or the measurement was off. Either way the remake is on us.
Stuck halfway? Send a photo, not a description
One picture of the corner or the edge you are looking at tells us more than a paragraph. Real people answer, usually within four hours, and never with a link back to this page.