New Kitchen Windows

The moment I set eyes on this house I knew there were windows that were all wrong and not original.  I knew they would need to be changed but I had no idea that the change of a few windows would make such a difference on the interior.  The view from the inside is vastly improved.  The new window changes how the room feels, too.

In between the rainstorms we worked on framing out the first opening to the correct size.  Once that was completed we needed to add the sheathing and then the rigid foam insulation.

The window unit itself needed some prep work.  The unit was wrapped in plastic with wide foam strips covering the white exterior trim.  There was also wood strips that are screwed into the unit to keep everything together for transportation.  The last things that we removed were little triangular pieces of wood that are stapled on the backside to support the wide trim during shipping.

R gathered all the milk crates he could find in the barn to stack under the window opening.  We stood the window up and I attempted to lift my side just 1 inch to see if my neck could handle it. Nope.  The shooting pain across the back of my skull told me we needed to call in reinforcements.  

We called our son and daughter in law who just happened to be close by doing a test run on a new exhaust setup on their beater Vette.  It's pretty much all cars, all the time, with my son. I'm sure his Grand National is sitting in the garage waiting for this coming week.  In the Flint area starting on Monday, there will be a cruise somewhere and then on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday is the Back to the Bricks car show in downtown Flint.  Of course you won't see photos of that in the news.  That's good news and people enjoying themselves in Flint is opposite of what the media wants to portray when it comes to Flint.

That's a whole lot of cars.  Also take note of the original iron arches.

Back to the Bricks.org

But back to the window......When B & G arrived we explained the crate set up and how we thought we should go about lifting this window into place.  R and G lifted the window onto the first lower set of crates.  For the next step, B and I  stepped in to support the middle of the window.  We fine tuned the placement and took a deep breath and then lifted the window and slid it right into place.  A little tap here and there and a check with the 4 foot long level showed we were good to go with a couple of screws on each side to secure the unit.

Once the window was in G remarked that it went a lot easier than he expected.  I remarked that I thought it was B and I carrying all the weight in the middle that made the difference.  He was not convinced...LOL

They left and R and I got busy and removed the other kitchen window, which is the same size as the one we just removed.  The first window took almost two days to remove and the window today took two hours.  It was a combination of now knowing how the window was constructed and what comes off first and the added fact that we were just more confident in what we were doing.

We have rain in the forecast for mid week so we would like to get the second window installed and maybe start on installing the shingles.  But now that it has rained the grass needs mowing so we will need to fit that chore in there somewhere.  Ahhhh the joy of old house ownership.

Reuse Repurpose Recycle