These top down bottom up shades have been a pain from the start. I sent one back to be repaired because it was very difficult to raise the blind. It was so hard I thought the string word break. They returned the blind and said nothing was wrong with it. Okay I struggled with it simply do to the fact I paid way to much for them. Finally the string broke. Found videos produced by Hunter Douglas which were quite helpful but no where did any of them say how many pieces of string to cut for a top down bottom up shade. After spending a number of hours just trying to the the shade apart I thought victory was mine, wrong. You need to cut four identical lengths not two as the videos show. Wonder why this simple fact is not stated in the video