Lol I feel your pain. I have the same thing in my living room, it goes out to my patio.. I just added white shears instead, I made it look more like a window instead of a sliding glass door. Lol

I have a whole wall that I need to block off with some sort of door. I'm thinking that a bi-fold door would be awesome. However, my husband kind of wants a sliding door. I just think how cool it'd be to have a whole wall made up of a door that could easily be tucked away when needed. This would make outdoor barbecues a lot easier. It would sure save me from having to open the door every time. http://www.superiorwindows.com.au/content/Products/BifoldDoors.aspx 

First I need to say that I've been caught out by old threads too so everybody, it's an OLD THREAD and the poster has already said what she ended up doing. But FWIW I thought your blinds looked good but I can understand wanting a colour change and grey would also be lovely from outside and a nice change inside. I hope you didn't give up on the vertical blind idea only because of the negativity from 'style experts'. We 'upgraded' our front room windows and although I like the appearance of what we have there now I am frequently conscious of the fact that I can't "filter the amount of light & privacy". Vertical blinds are very functional and how cheap or expensive they look is influenced by the choice of fabric, of course as with everything people's personal tastes vary, but the negativity toward vertical blinds sounds like a case of 'Emperor's New Clothes'.

I've got a similar setup as Picture 2 and have procrastinated for 4 years about how to treat the door/window. Blinds are tricky as they need to be mounted at different heights (assuming you have one attached to the door) which will look odd. My only option appears to be a free curtain that can be swept to either side, depending on whether we are using the door or want the views out the window. I regret installing this configuration though and wish I had thought more deeply about it when we were building.