So, you can't sleep
>> [music]
>> and it's because of that pesky light.
Well, light pollution is a real thing
and I don't think people take it
seriously [music] enough, if I'm being
honest. Humans were never meant to be
pelted in their irises [music] by light
24/7 like we are today. And perhaps you
work night shift or [music] there's a
street light outside of your window or
you're just a light sleeper and you want
to have complete [music] total darkness.
That's the way it should be. But if
you're like me, you've gone through the
same rigmarole. It's always the same
thing. You're like, "Oh man, that
window, you know, it [music] it blocks
most of the light, but even just a
little bit of light is really bothering
me." Which is true, a little bit of
light does tell your body it's time to
wake up. "Maybe I can like cover [music]
it up or something." And then you start
this process where you you you hang
something over the window. You notice
that there's still so much light that
it's keeping you up or it's waking you
[music] up early. You tell your friends
and like, "Just get blackout curtains."
Those don't work. There's always light
creeping in from the sides. So, then you
get really creative and you put tin foil
on the windows because you saw a YouTube
video and cardboard and all this other
stuff. And I mean, that will that will
actually work. If you put tin foil and
then cardboard over window, it will be
completely 100% light resistant. But it
looks ugly, especially if you live
somewhere where there's an HOA, you will
get told to take that down.
Additionally, if you live with somebody
else, especially like a wife, they're
not going to like how that looks. Oh,
and by the way, you totally ruin access
to the window. So, what if there's a way
that you could cover up a window that
was 100% light resistant, it didn't look
like a sixth grader's entry into a
science fair project, and you could
still use the window? Well, there is a
way and it took me about a year to
figure this out. I'm Grant Harding, I'm
a licensed pharmacist in four states,
and I'm also a vampire. Just kidding,
but I do have to sleep during the day
quite a bit because I do work night
shift. So, what we're going to do is
apply a 100% light resistant fabric
around the perimeter of the window. And
there's an actually you can actually go
inside the window as well. But the
magnets make a completely flush seal. So
there's not going to be any light
creeping in around the edges. And
because they're magnets, you can just
take it off and put it back on at your
leisure. Back whenever I figured this
out, the products that I used they were
only B2B. You couldn't buy it as a
consumer. But now, at the time of me
making this video, you can buy it as a
consumer. They're both on Amazon. So
first thing we want is this incredibly
awesome blackout fabric. This is from a
company called Haynes. I have yet to
figure out if it's the same company that
makes the underwear or not. If someone
wants to investigate that, please do.
But they make uh like this industrial
fabric for like hotels. Like if you go
to a hotel, there's probably Haynes that
made that. And this is their one product
called Serenity blackout. Do not look
for any other fabric in the entire
world. I went through several I don't
know how many I went through, but this
is definitely the best by far. Other
fabrics aren't completely 100% light
resistant, and a lot of the other ones
are like this weird like kind of
plasticky material that heats up in the
sun and smells bad. So this is $9 a yard
on Amazon. I'll link this and all the
other products mentioned in the
description of this video for you guys
to buy. It's not an FBA product, so you
have to wait for them to actually cut
this and ship it to you. But trust me,
it's worth it. The width, by the way, of
this fabric is 54 in, which is enough
for most windows. So you'll probably
only need 1 yd for a standard size
window. But of course, we'll measure
here and and I'll show you how to figure
out how much you need. And very
important, when you buy this from
Amazon,
the number the quantity you buy
is the number of contiguous yards that
they will send you. So if you buy 2 yd,
which this is actually 2 yd, it's one
piece. We can't be sewing things
together here. You need to measure and
then buy the number of yards and they
will send it to you in one piece. Don't
buy multiple orders. They will cut it
then. The next thing we need is the
magnets. Now, I've again went through
looking at several different companies.
I've tested all sorts of different
products. This is the one you want.
Don't go looking for anything else. This
is Master Magnetics.
Um I'll have the Amazon link here.
Again, they used to be only B2B. Only
recently did they start selling this on
Amazon, um you know, to consumers.
Buying magnets is way more difficult
than what it sounds. They make it easy
on Amazon. Whenever you like actually
have a business account with this
company, I mean there's so many options,
like the adhesive and the thickness and
everything. This is the one you want.
This is different from what you will buy
at like Walmart or True Value or
something. That magnetic tape that you
buy at a hardware store is trash. It has
virtually no magnetism to it at all. The
adhesive is junk. You just set it on the
wall and then it just peels off. This is
hardcore heavy duty. They sell this to
like factories and stuff, people who
like need a lot of magnets for like
labeling and things. Um so, this is a
very These are two very industrial
products that we have to use today. Now,
these magnets are quite expensive and
for good reason. Mostly because you're
going to need way more than what you
think you need. So, this is a 100-ft
roll and it was $54. When you look at
the product listing for this, don't get
confused with like the 1/16 and stuff.
1/16 is almost exactly 0.06 in. I don't
know why they do that, but it is very
confusing to the consumer. So, if you
don't want the 100-ft roll, you can get
multiple 10-ft rolls. Um
but you'll have to find that on your
own. 0.06 in thickness, 1 in wide. Okay,
let me show you how to install this.
This is the window that I'm going to
cover up today, and we do need two more
additional products. You just need a dry
paper towel and just some duct tape.
Now, there's several ways to do this.
One, I could take this blind off and go
on the inside of the perimeter.
I'm not going to do that today just
because I don't need to. And also, these
are developed by Satan. I hate whatever
type of blind this is. They're so
incredibly difficult to get off. For
most people, you're going to go around
the perimeter. So, the first thing you
would want to do is just get a rough
estimate, and it doesn't have to be
beautiful,
of the length of the window.
I don't know. Let's just call that 40, I
guess.
And then this we'll call
28.
So, the goal here is not to measure it
the the length of the magnetic strip and
then apply it. I just want you to know
how much you would need. So, 40, 80,
I don't Let's call this 30, 60.
So, 30 and 30.
So, you need 140 in.
But, we need two layers cuz we're going
to trap the fabric between two magnetic
layers. So, you'd actually need 280 in
per window. See where this kind of
becomes pretty heavy then when we're
talking about, you know, 1-in wide
magnets. There's like this acrylic kind
of
I just wouldn't really call this the
flattest surface in the world. And
because of that, all we want to do is
just kind of just get the dust off of
this area. It doesn't have to be
spectacular, but a little bit of dust
will keep the um magnets from sticking.
But, actually in this case, we're going
to put down a layer of duct tape first.
That's because this surface is not
smooth, obviously. So, putting actually
we'll probably put a couple layers
will help um
you know, make this more of a smooth
surface for our magnets to attach to.
Next, [snorts] we get our very heavy
duty magnets here and the goal is to
just outline you know, the window
the perimeter of the window. So, all I
do is just unravel a little bit here and
you don't need to measure, right? We're
just eyeballing. It doesn't matter.
And that looks good right there. So,
I'll just cut here.
And using the paper towel from earlier,
it helps apply this. Now, this really
isn't important, you know, that it's
straight and that it's a nice flush
seal. So, that is something I'm going to
take a lot of time
making sure I get this correct here.
Looks good to me.
Use the paper towel to guide you as you
pull the paper off
and you stick this
magnet strip on here.
I forgot to mention this. One of the
best parts about this is it doesn't
damage the wall. You can do this
whenever you're renting.
Like this just comes off.
Now, when attaching the next side or I
guess the horizontal part, it needs to
be very, very flush.
As flush as humanly possible. So,
whenever we make this connection here
it should I mean, there should be no
space
at all.
And it looks like I didn't really put
that tape on the straightest either.
>> [snorts]
>> Uh as I'm putting this on, you're
probably wondering, "Yeah, right. Like
that's going to hold up." Well, there's
two things that you need to consider
here.
One, you're used to the cheapest,
junkiest
yeah, I don't even know what type of
magnetic tape. And two
the important part here whenever
you're talking about the strength of the
adhesive and the strength of the magnet
isn't actually the strength of the
magnet or the adhesive by itself. It's
the surface area. There's so much
tape around this perimeter
that it doesn't matter what you hang on
it within reason.
It it pulls on the entire, you know,
strip theoretically kind of like at the
same rate. If you were to hang something
with one point here,
that one point is going to get all of
that weight. But because this is so
spread out, that's kind of the secret as
to why this sticks and stays.
I've got the top smoothly applied here,
but this
part here is not flush. So, this is the
only part that actually takes some, I
guess you could call it finesse, I don't
know.
It's not as flush as what I would want
it, but it's good. Now, the the adhesive
on this uh magnetic tape,
it actually takes a couple
days for it to cure.
But I found in my experience you can
just
move on to the next part. It doesn't
really have to wait that long. It'll
cure on itself as the
thing is installed.
Now, uh so we have the adhesive stuck to
the
tape, which is stuck to the wall. Now,
we just need to measure our
um I guess you could call it the holding
piece. Now, be, you know, aware these
are magnets, so there's a north and
south.
So, you want to make sure you're
orienting things correctly. Although, I
guess I could cut it and then orient it.
That's no problem, really. So, that's
all you do. You just stick it on there
and then just cut. You don't have to
measure nothing.
And I did have that oriented
incorrectly, so let me flip that around.
Boom.
It just snaps in. Do you see where I'm
going with this? All you do is just put
the fabric in between here. So, let's do
the rest of this perimeter.
Almost done here. This part's the fun
part cuz the magnets just kind of snap
in. You don't
have to do anything.
Consider this custom to your window.
This is very important. The orientation
that these,
you know, the the the
layer that's closest to us, the I guess
holding layer, whatever you want to call
it. Consider this orientation permanent.
So, what you could do is take a marker
and somehow denote, you know,
bottom left,
you know, top left,
you know, top left horizontal, some way
of knowing that this orientation will
never change. Because if what happens if
I try to take this and move it over
here, it's not going to work. Same with
the top.
It it's just everything has to be so
perfect and the way this is right now is
perfect and we don't want to change
that. So, now we want to take our Haynes
Serenity Black, blackout, whatever it
was called.
And remember, the width is actually it's
very very wide. The width of this fabric
is going to be more than enough for most
windows.
But whatever way is the most economical,
you know, just throw it up here. Okay,
for this one we actually are going to
measure.
Okay, so we want to have, you know, some
fabric coming out. So, we don't want
exactly
um
So, we'll go, you know, like a half an
inch or so
on the other side. Okay, 32.
So, this is the fabric all laid out.
And at 33 in, I just need to cut across
here. So, that's what I'm going to do
now.
So, I have here is the fabric
um completely flush on all the corners.
Let's take the back here a little bit.
And because I know it's flush, I can
simply just stick my little scizzers in
here, letting the scissors
cut through the fabric just like that.
Now, remember the orientation of the
magnets matters.
And actually, now that I'm looking at
this, I wish I would have done this a
different way.
I wish I would have put this magnet here
up on top, but this will be okay, I
guess.
So, you just remove one.
Stick it right on.
Let the magnet carry the fabric into the
place where it's supposed to be.
So, that's good.
And then you just do the same with the
sides.
Snaps right into the place.
>> [snorts]
>> That's it. We have to trim this up a
little bit because this hanging is going
to apply enough pressure that it may
pull that magnet off at some point. So,
just
no measuring, [snorts] just make it
clean. That's all you do.
There. 100% blackout.
Okay, obviously a professional
seamstress could make this look a lot
better, but it functions. I mean,
let's turn off the light and take a
look.
Not a single
drop of light. The only light coming in
is through my other window. So, I'll
plug that one up now, and we'll take a
look at how pitch dark this actually
gets in here.
Whoops. Sorry.
Yeah, disorientingly black.
I mean, this is just pitch black now.
Here, I got the
other window all shaped up.
So, it's pretty simple. The only thing
I'd like to mention is whenever you cut
these strips, they want to
sit together very, very flush. So, you
see how this is a kind of at an angle?
Make sure whenever you cut, it does as
much as a right angle as you can
possibly make it. So, that is pretty
important so that these, you know, they
they come together very very flush.
That's really the only point. Don't
don't peel off the adhesive and then
stick it to the fabric and then try to
attach it that way. I've seen people do
that before. That'll come off. This is
not This adhesive is not made for
fabric. It's made for, you know, flatter
surfaces. But, anyway, there we go. Now,
I'm going to take a daytime nap. If you
enjoyed this presentation, stick around
and make all sorts of cool little videos
like this.