Finn’s high school was ranked in the 99th percentile of Maryland high schools, according to the 2024 school report card. Not too shabby.
Over the course of the last ten years, we’ve replaced a lot of windows in this house, by fits and starts. As we’ve worked on each room as a project, I’ve pulled the old out and put the new in, which means we’ve got a mix and match set of manufacturers, from Pella to Andersen to Mi depending on where you are. I don’t see it as a bad thing—Andersens are in the office, Pellas are in the den, and Mi is everywhere else. (Side note: the Pellas are garbage; their mullions are made of cardboard and the windows are sticky to close. The Andersens are better, easier to use and clean. The Mi windows aren’t as good looking as the first two, but are much more affordable and very sturdy).
I decided I needed to line up a project on the house for this fall, and priced out windows for the upstairs. What we’re talking about here is all of the bedrooms and the stairwell window—the master bathroom got new glass years ago. That’s nine windows in total, with the four front windows being 4″ taller than the rest. Back before ‘Rona I thought that $400 a window was a lot of money to spend, but when the price of everything went up because of “supply chain issues” I figured I’d wait it out until things settled back down. I’m now reading about inflation and recession and the End Times and figure the prices probably won’t return to where they were in 2020, so now was as good a time as any.
So today I placed an order for nine replacement windows with the remainder of our HELOC money, and in six to eight weeks we’ll have a stack of new glass waiting for me to swap out. I figure I’ll start in Finley’s room and work my way across the front of the house, then move around to the back side. I had a pretty good system going when I finished the living room windows, so hopefully I can perfect the process and make it go quickly.
Well, looky here. There was rumbling on the forums and through the interwebs that someone was working on producing new wing window rubber for the Scout II, as nobody was making replacements and everyone’s rubber was/is cracked, rotten, hard, or about to be all of the above. I’ve got, between spare parts and whole doors, about five spare wing windows per side, and all of them have either cracked rubber, a spring mechanism where the weld is broken, or a busted hinge. It was with great pleasure that I saw an outfit in North Carolina is going to be producing new rubber, for the eye-watering price of $375/set. Yeah, yeah, this isn’t an F-body Camaro or a ’66 Mustang, for which brand-new parts are everywhere, but I’ll have to really consider the purchase before I pull the trigger.
Tomorrow night, I’m headed out to the first proper welding class I’ve ever taken, and I’m pretty excited. My first “training” was in college in the sculpture lab after hours; a very brusque and attractive TA gave me a basic lesson in MIG welding for a six-pack of beer, and while she was detailed in her description, I had about 20 minutes of hands-on learning before she had to leave, and I was on my own to booger-weld anything I could find. I did a basic refresher in 2014 at the Baltimore Foundery, and while that was fun it didn’t improve my skills at all. This course is a professional 36 hours of training and in-class practice, and at the end of it I should know what I’m doing a lot better.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
It’s been quiet around these parts lately. Work is going full-steam-ahead, which means I spend about 80% of my day going from meeting to meeting even though I have the small free spots in my work calendar blocked out with a big purple NO MEETINGS meeting. My organization was pretty immune to the Great Resignation up until the beginning of this year, when a trickle became a flood, and it seems like every all-hands meeting starts out with someone announcing they’re leaving. We’re doing more than we ever have with the same number of people for dumb financial reasons, and it feels like every loss hits us harder and harder. I know it’s sapped my morale but I don’t know how to talk about it with my staff in a way that doesn’t sound like a rah-rah Kool-Aid dispenser or Debbie Downer. I still work for an excellent organization, and I don’t think our morals or mission have changed, but I know we’re strained by manpower and that has taken a toll on our collective psyche.
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I’m moving forward with the purchase of two new basement windows but holding off on the larger double-hung window in the hallway for pricing reasons. If I order now it’ll be here sometime in May, which won’t make a difference in our heating bill but should make airing out the basement much easier.
Originally, I was going to fart around with trim in the bathroom on Sunday afternoon. It was supposed to be 54 degrees, and having spent two freezing hours out on the soccer field watching Finley’s team on Saturday (they won the first game and lost the second) I didn’t relish the thought of opening the house to frigid arctic winds. But as I drove Finn to a friend’s house I realized it was warmer than I’d been led to believe. So I grabbed a bagful of spray foam from the Home Depot and commenced to making a mess in the living room.
This shot is after I pulled two of the trim pieces off, but hadn’t yanked the window out yet.
Here both casements have been pulled from the right side, and the storm window frame is the only thing left on that side (it came out right after this shot).
The new window is placed on the right side. This is the best comparison between old and new windows. The new ones are a little smaller in terms of window size, but brighter in the amount of light getting through.
This is with both windows placed, but before I’d mounted them permanently. As of Sunday night they’re screwed in, surrounded with foam, and the trim pieces are placed, but I don’t have any caulk, which I’ll pick up this week. Once the caulk goes in, that will help a lot with any residual leaks, but these are already a million times better than the old ones. All three sash pockets are filled with expanding foam, which should keep things toasty. It was a fast bit of work, but I got everything installed in five hours.
The second set of replacement windows is in place in the dining room. This was a two-day project due to all the unknowns and the extra work I had to do to get the frame prepped and the sash pockets insulated. The original windows came out easier than I thought they might, after battling years of old paint and caulk to get the moulding off. Once that was done I put in and took out the replacements a total of about six times for fitment and prep work.
The difference in light is dramatic. The old windows were the original wavy glass from 1925, and when compounded by a pair of storm windows covered in dirt, we may well have just covered them in plywood for all the light that made its way through.
These new windows go up and down like butter. They’re quieter. The top window isn’t painted shut so we can vent the hot air up at the ceiling. This is going to make a big difference.
It doesn’t look like much, but this is Sunday’s product. The windows are secured in place, an all moulding is caulked and sealed on the inside. I need more cap moulding for the top and I need a thin strip for under the sill, as well as more insulation for the now-empty sash pockets. Once that’s been bought, I can seal this up completely and be ready for paint on a day when it’s snowing.
We got four new windows delivered yesterday, and I took about 20 minutes to fit both of these into place after dinner. They went in like butter: a perfect fit for both. I’d spent more than one night worrying about having measured them wrong and being stuck with something that wouldn’t work, but this went smoothly. And they look great too.
We also heard from the cabinet folks that those will be delivered on Wednesday…
I pulled a bunch of little caterpillars off the tomato plants last night, probably about 20 of them, and crushed them beneath my shoe. They destroyed the top foliage on half of the plants and in doing so killed off the third wave of fruit. Disgusted, I cut back most of the brown foliage, watered everything, and picked the remaining ripe tomatoes. There’s still some green fruit left but it’s pretty sparse, so this is pretty much the end of our tomato season for 2019. It looks like they are Yellowstriped Armyworms, which are pretty common up the eastern seaboard and love to eat crops.
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After measuring and re-measuring the windows in the dining room, I called and got pricing for four new replacements, two for the outside wall and two for the porch wall. The outside wall should be a cut-and-dry operation, basically pulling the outer moulding, removing the windows themselves, and pulling the sash weight mechanicals. I think the biggest issue is going to be filling the sash pockets with some kind of insulation—whether it’s spray foam or compressed cellulose, I’ve got to find a good solution for getting in there and making sure they’re packed.
The front windows are going to be more of a challenge, because when the Doctor had them covered over, the workers chopped about 2″ off of each of the verticals in the windowframe so they don’t extend all the way to the edge that meets the wall. I’m faced with either ripping the entire dual windowframe out and replacing it, or taking each vertical board out one at a time and replacing it without moving the horizontal header and plate. The latter solution is the best, but requires nonstandard wood dimensions—the boards are 1 1/4″ thick, which hasn’t been standard since before the Second World War. So I’ll either have to have something milled or work with what Home Depot has.
Meanwhile the bathroom cabinets are on order (have I mentioned that already?) and should be ready in another 2-3 weeks, which gives me enough time to sort out the last of the geometry problems over the back door of the bathroom. Basically the windowframe and the doorframe both come together at an odd angle, close enough that the cap moulding overlaps in space. The way it’s set up now I’ve got to pull the side casing I tacked in off the door and replace it with new boards about 1/4″ higher so that the top of the window and door are at the same height.
Once that’s done I can move inside the closet and finish off the moulding inside and work my way around the perimeter of the floor up to the shower.
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Hazel is getting more and more used to our daily routines (such as they are) and mostly settling in to a schedule of her own. Inside accidents have reduced dramatically, and she’s very good at letting us know when she needs to go out. Her prey drive has ramped up though, and the cats are scarce whenever she’s out on her own. Her anxiety has also ramped up to double what it was when we first got her, so there’s been more whining and crying at night in the crate. We have a quote from the Invisible Fence guy to surround the house with wire, and I’m going to call him today to schedule it.
We have shower door glass!
And we have grouted floor pebbles! I’m told we can shower in this thing today, but I’m going to wait a day for the inaugural test run.
This is what happens when you hire professionals to work on your house: shit gets done right. We are HAPPY.