Suzanne Barlyn and her husband have a problem: living room windows that have been “bare for ten years.”

“We’re not exhibitionists,” she explained in her recent “Cranky Consumer” column in the Wall Street Journal. “We just never have been able to make up our minds about what to hang.”

Which is why, she wrote, they turned to five leading professional shop-at-home window treatment services to help them cover their two large rectangular windows, measuring 42 inches wide and 67 inches high.

She had kind words for them all.

The representative from V2K Window Decor & More was “prompt and easy to work with,” according to Barlyn. 

 And, she added, the designer from J.C Penney Custom Decorating “instilled our immediate confidence” by indicating that she had been a window fashion professional for  10 years.

The author liked the way the representative from Interiors by Decorating Den  “promptly responded to our consultation request” and “shared a portolio of full-room decorating projects from other homes.”

The column praised the Smith+Noble’s virtual design center, a tool which enables you to “see how different styles would look with different fabrics.”

“This helpful tool also let us change wall and window trim colors,”  Barlyn pointed out.

She and her husband also met with an Ethan Allen representative, whose proposed window treatments “were the nicest of any we considered — especially the trim made of wooden tacks.”

When all was said and done, she compared costs.

The price for decor ideas and treatments from the five companies ranged considerably: from $265 per window (J.C. Penney) to $800 per window (Ethan Allen).  As for the others: V2K:$270; Interiors by Decorating Den: $400: and Smith+Noble: $500.

So what does this “Cranky Consumer” plan to do?  She seems to prefer the more expensive Ethan Allen treatments — eventually.

“We’ll hold out, until we fit them into our budget,” she noted. “After 10 years, why not wait a few more?”