[0:00] So, you can't sleep >> 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 [0:30] 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 [1:01] 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 [1:34] 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 [2:05] 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 [2:37] 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 [3:11] 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 important, when you buy this from Amazon, the number the quantity you buy [3:43] 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 [4:13] 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 [4:44] 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 [5:14] 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 [5:45] 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 [6:15] estimate, and it doesn't have to be 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 I don't know. Let's just call that 40, I guess. And then this we'll call 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. [6:46] 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 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 [7:17] 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 [7:50] 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 [8:21] 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 [8:51] be very, very flush. As flush as humanly possible. So, whenever we make this connection here it should I mean, there should be no 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. 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 two things that you need to consider here. One, you're used to the cheapest, [9:22] 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, [9:54] 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 guess you could call it finesse, I don't know. It's not as flush as what I would want [10:26] 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 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 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 [10:56] piece. Now, be, you know, aware these are magnets, so there's a north and 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 [11:26] 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 [11:57] 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 [12:29] 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 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 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 fabric coming out. So, we don't want exactly exactly um So, we'll go, you know, like a half an inch or so on the other side. Okay, 32. [13:02] 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 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 [13:33] 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 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 And then you just do the same with the sides. [14:07] 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, 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 [14:38] better, but it functions. I mean, let's turn off the light and take a 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. [15:09] 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 [15:40] 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.