Help, putting up blinds and hitting lintel

[savvysquirrel]

Hi,

So we have bought two lots of wooden venetian blinds from Blinds2go to go up in the window recess of two of our bedrooms. We put the smallest one up on the weekend which was 177cm wide by side fixing the brackets to the recess, it came with a middle support bracket but it appears to be ok without it. However, our main bedroom window is bigger and the blind is 235cm wide, we've put the side brackets up and this one came with two support brackets which need to be top fixed to the recess. I tried to drill the holes for the support brackets yesterday but I think we have lintel above the recess so I can only drill so far before coming to a halt. I've read that a HSS drill bit might get through the lintel, however I'm also wondering whether I definitely need to put up the support brackets or whether the side brackets will be enough? The headrail is made of metal so is pretty solid and the blinds won't be pulled up and down that much. What do you think?

Hi I have put up blinds2go wood venetians and I used a hss bit to drill into the lintel, it was really easy I found a tutorial online. I'll try and find it and post it here.

The support brackets are probably necessary, mine had 3 and I feel more comfortable knowing the blind isn't going to fall down because it's quite heavy.

I think this is the video I used, I hope you find it helpful.

Thanks @RitaFires this is really helpful! I think I'd feel better having the support brackets up too. I'll get a HSS drill bit this week and give it another go on the weekend.

Is there a chance you've hit a stone in your lintel? Might just be a case of trying again in a slightly different position. (In my case, one inch along was enough, and I was using a regular drill driver!)

Ok so I bought a HSS drill bit and gave it another go in a couple of different positions and still no joy. I'm not 100% certain that it's metal as the drill bit didn't seem to have any metal shavings on it and a white dust was coming out. Any ideas?

I've got the side brackets up but I feel like the blind is going to be too heavy to not have any middle support brackets.

As I'm a novice DIYer please tell me if this is a stupid idea, but I'm thinking if I can make holes 20mm deep before hitting lintel (or whatever it is that's there) could I trim a rawl plug and screw the brackets in with 20mm screws? The side brackets are screwed in properly on the side so these are just the support ones which I'm assuming (maybe wrongly) might not take as much weight, and would be better than nothing.

We had the same thing at the weekend, Two large day and night blinds and we used the 3 brackets but luckily had a decent drill bit although was still a struggle .
Definitely try trimming a rawl plug, we have done similar before .