Well you can tell by this picture, we were never fond of the day/night shades that came with our Bus. Within the first year we had broken strings on nearly every shade and by the end of year two several of the replacement shades had busted too. We were ready to give them the boot!

This picture was taken the day I took all the valances down to recover them and begin replacing the shades - hopefully for the last time. The Bus was in the storage unit and it was 95 degrees - we had no more patience for the busted shades at this point so we just cut them out of the way.

We first saw the MCD shades in a 2008 Allegro Bus at a dealership and were impressed.  I proceeded to do some research and found some good and bad comments on the TiffinRVNework forum about their performance -  which thankfully the owner of MCD joined in on. 

It appeared most of those problems were installation related so we were hopeful that these issues would settle down eventually.  About this same time the owner announced a special pricing offer for existing Tiffin owners to buy them,  so we jumped on it.

With directions from MCD, I carefully measured the inside of each valance and phoned in the order.  I also sent an email with my measurements so they had a paper trail.

The shades came in one huge box - each was carefully packaged and marked like this.

And this is what they look like before installation.

Installing the shades into the valances is very easy.  You simply add the clips they provide and snap them into place

But ……..

Yes there is a but!  I could only do this with the valances down.  Trying to do it with the valance installed proved impossible.  There was simply not enough room for my hands to maneuver the frame into those clips. I tried many, many times on the small window valances.  I can’t imagine trying to do it on the bigger ones.

As you can see the frame for these shades is metal and much more substantial than the day/night shades frame.   Picture this set against the wall and the window frame that sets a bit inside makes for a very skinny area.  I don’t know how Tiffin does this on the newer coaches - my guess is the valances are deeper than ours.

So while the shades are great, installation of all of this brought a new challenge.

One of our goals was to make it easy to remove a valance if a shade needed repair or re tensioning.  Tom suggested we attach them by applying heavy duty Velcro on the top (one side stuck on the cabinet - the other stapled to the valance top) and the L-brackets.

I don’t have a picture to illustrate this during the installation, but if you look closely at this pic you’ll see the black velcro along the top.  This particular valance is only held in place with the velcro.  I have removed this to test how it works — and believe me you must tug to get it down.

After one year the velcro idea is working great on all valances, except the bigger windows. I feared this might be the case.  If you look at the valance over the dining window (picture below) you can see it is coming loose at the top. Our plan is to add some L-brackets to secure this better.  Perhaps we won’t need the velcro at all — we’ll see.

By the way, I did remove the velcro from the cabinetry by the recliner window six months later (to replace it with black vs. white) and it did not ruin the cabinetry at all.  My theory - if any of the velcro shows - black makes it look like a shadow.

The only other thing to share is the tension problems some owners have experienced. If the valance will not go up  or flies up it needs to be adjusted. Reference the picture below.

To fix, simply remove the end clips on the bottom rail — then remove the rail.  Wrap the shade around the roll a few times to increase tension — unwrap it to loosen it.  Reattach the rail and end clips when done.  Some say they can do this without removing the valance, but I have not tried that method yet.  We have only one shade that needs some extra tension.

Total Cost - $1900 (shipping included) for 10 shades. You had to buy a shade for every window (except the front drape area) to get the deal. We have installed all of them, except the one for the water closet.  To my knowledge that offer was an OTO option.  Contact MCD for additional information.

A couple more pics to show a few shades open. We love them!

We still have the front curtain — perhaps some day we’ll replace that with the power shades, but we won’t do that ourselves.  My understanding is that some woodwork modifications are necessary for our year coach.