Big window in!

Woot-woot!! We have finally achieved window success!! Our big window is now happily in its new home in our front room. We must be such losers, because we’ve been admiring it since we got it in yesterday. It just looks so…..nice. Of course, there was a fair amount of work that went into getting that big sucker in there, but we didn’t have any major drama this time around.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this or not, but the new window is all one unit, not 3 separate units like what was there before. We used to have a big picture window with two small double-hungs (one on each side), and we replaced it with a large unit that has a sliding window on each side–it’s 95″ long, so it was one inch shy of the maximum window size…

We had to do more nailfin demolition on this one, but after being in practice, it wasn’t much of a chore, and the reciprocating saw made things so much easier than trying to saw it by hand or something. We did discover that our big window was actually for a stick built house, not a brick house as we had originally ordered, but we made it work without any major issues; basically it just has an extra little flange next to the nailfin on the bottom edge that we cut off along with the nailfin.

Lessons learned from this project:
1. Plan to wait a long time for your windows to arrive.
2. Plan for errors–some of them fairly major.
3. Brush up on your patience.
4. Have help lined up in advance.
5. Don’t wait until October to put in a window that is bigger than your front door.
6. The right tools for the job are essential.
7. Did I mention not waiting until October to take on a window that is bigger than a front door?
8. Remember that you’re likely to have at least one window that isn’t what you ordered.

So, with that, the window project is completed!! Woot-woot!! 😀