You know how it just wouldn’t be a home improvement project if there wasn’t some drama involved? Well, I guess we’ve a home improvement project! *eye rolls* There were like 5 windows that the previous owners didn’t replace, the big picture window in the living room, the bathroom window, and the laundry room window. When we were scraping to do some repainting, we discovered that the big picture window was in pretty sad shape, so we decided to replace it. You might remember from a while back that I had gotten it priced so that we could actually replace all of those windows for the same price as it would have cost to get the local guy to order just the picture window (and the two tiny windows on each side). Well, we had ordered those windows and gotten them the other day, and were super pumped to get them installed…..until we looked a bit closer. It turns out, that the replacement windows I had purchased (and waited three and a half weeks to get) had a nailfin that wouldn’t work with our current setup.
Blasted nailfin!
So, we contemplated taking them back, but ultimately decided that with a bit of retro-fitting, we could potentially get them to work if we cut the nail fin off. Enter the DeWalt version of the Sawzall…we broke that baby out to slice the nailfin off before carefully filing the plastic ridge down smooth. Man I love that thing–no homeowner should be without one. 🙂
Hubs cutting the nailfin
Nailfin carnage!
Enter problem numero dos. The window frame that the replacements fit into has a slant going downhill, presumably to drain water….which, if you haven’t already guessed, won’t work with the replacement windows.
Can you see the slant?
So, after calculating (very carefully) we determined the perfect angle at which we would have to cut a 2×4 to make it sit level (which, was NOT 17* as suggested by someone as a “common rule of thumb”) and so we cut that board a couple of times to get just the right fit.
Whew! No slant!
So now, we’ve got the bathroom and laundry room windows in. I’ve still got to stain the trim boards for the one in the laundry room, and I’m waiting for the stain to dry so that I can put some poly on the ones for the bathroom after hubs gets the window foamed, but the hard part is over! Yay!
As yet, the big picture window isn’t going to happen, because we don’t have a method of transporting it from the store to our house, nor do we have enough help to get that heavy sucker in/out of the frame. Hopefully, by this weekend we’ll have some family come up to help, but we’re taking this one window at a time.
BTW, our new windows are fabulous! We got the obscured glass for the bathroom (which I highly recommend) like what was in there before, and it’s nice and quiet, keeps the cold out, doesn’t get a lot of condensation (except when someone is showering!), and just looks a lot nicer. 🙂 I’d take a picture, but honestly, my bathroom is too much of a mess to show off to anyone for any reason…sorry! 😉
Splinters & Stitches 