Custom Shutters, Shades & Blinds in Homedale, ID

The town’s name was drawn out of a hat

That is not a legend somebody made up for a brochure. At a community picnic, names were put in a hat and one was pulled: Homedale.

It fits a town that was built by people who arrived with nothing arranged for them. Jacob Mussell settled this ground in the late 1800s and built a ferry across the Snake River in 1898 so that settlers could get across. By 1914 there was a mayor, a council, a schoolhouse and a railroad — and it still did not officially become a city until 1920.

Two settlement stories from that era are still visible in town:

Austrian Town. In 1914, Austrian settlers were recruited here with promises of good farmland. They arrived to find it undeveloped — and still had to buy it. They stayed anyway, and an area of Homedale is called Austrian Town to this day.

The Basque community. Basque culture runs deep here, as it does in few places outside Boise, and the Txoko Ona Basque dance is an annual event. Idaho’s Basque community is known worldwide; Homedale is one of its homes.

What we install in Homedale

A young town, which changes what we bring to the appointment

A median age of 33 means a great many Homedale households have small children in them, and that shapes what we recommend before anybody starts looking at fabrics.

Every product line we fit has cordless options, and in a nursery or a child’s room those are what we will show you first. The same goes for a house with pets in it.

Mention it when we measure. It takes two minutes and it saves swapping something out later.

Farm country on the river, and what that does to a window

Homedale sits in open ground on the Snake, and the practical consequences are the same ones every open-country house deals with, only here with water in the mix:

Full sun with nothing in the way. No mature street trees, no neighbor’s house blocking the west. A west-facing room takes the whole July afternoon, low and direct, and that room runs hot into the evening while its floors and furniture fade faster than the rest of the house. A solar roller shade cuts the heat and glare while leaving the fields and the river visible; an exterior sun shade stops the heat outside the glass entirely.

Light off the water. Reflected light reaches surfaces direct sun never touches, which is why a river-facing room can look sun-tired sooner than it should.

And genuinely cold winter glass. Glass has almost no insulating value compared to the wall around it, so on a January night the window is where the heat goes. A cellular shade traps air in its pockets — the same principle a double-pane window uses — and that trapped air is what insulates.

A window covering here is working on your power bill twice a year in opposite directions, which is a more honest reason to buy one than fashion.

What we expect to find when we measure

In the older houses in these towns, we find a consistent set: aluminum window frames, a lot of original older windows, and some genuinely old wood blinds.

Aluminum is a conductor, so an aluminum frame runs cold through the winter and tends to be the spot where condensation turns up first in the whole house. Insulating that opening does measurably more than insulating a new one.

And a house with a century on it has moved. Openings that were true when they were cut are not true now, which is how a stock-size blind ends up with daylight running down one edge of it. Each window gets measured on its own — by us, not off a plan, not off a photo, and not from figures somebody else wrote down.

Any wood blinds still hanging are usually finished. The sun out here bows slats and makes cords brittle, and at that stage the conversation is about the replacement.

The work out here runs mostly to faux wood blinds, roller shades and Roman shades, with cellular shades for winter and exterior sun shades for a porch that takes the afternoon. Faux wood handles heat and dry air without the warping real wood can show. Roman shades soften a room full of hard light.

Shutters look beautiful in a Homedale home, farmhouse or new build, and choosing them is a matter of personal style — not of what kind of house you own.

Yes, we drive out to Homedale

Troy and Angela answer the phone. The two of us do the measuring ourselves — not a measuring service, not an app, not an estimate off a photograph. Our team measures, quotes and installs every job, and you deal with the same two people from the first call to the last bracket.

The driving is not something we put up with. It is how we have built relationships with the people we work for. Going the extra mile is the job.

And there is never a charge for the estimate. Not in Homedale, not anywhere else we go.