We were not ignorant to the fact that the windows, along with everything else in the house would be a lot of hard work. It's not just a matter of popping the old windows out and putting in the new ones - it would never be that easy at the Pitt. Instead, we take out the old window, take moment to express our disgust for how terribly unmaintained this house is, and then start re-building the infrastructure underneath. This may come as a shock, but everything under the windows is rotting, on its way to rotting, or we are totally surprised that it is still supporting the house. But no worries, we have Superman, my dad and The Boy Wonder, Bob, to take care of the situation. (Hopefully dad doesn't up the grand kid count for these).
The first window we started on was the one right next to the garage, in the kitchen. After multiple trips to the Home Depot (can these guys please give us a discount for mentioning their name so many times??) some replacing of old two by fours and foam, the window was in. It only took 11 hours. At this rate, we are replacing these suckers at one window a day. Slow and steady wins the race I guess.
So far there have been 4 successful installs. The kitchen window over the sink was 1 foot too wide - so we're back to the Depot to reorder (womp, womp). This is actually a blessing in disguise. After we ordered the window, our good friend suggested we put a bay window in so I could have vases and such on the window sill. The idea was brilliant, but we didn't want to re-order. Since we now have to reorder, we're going to get a bay window.
There have been a couple of nights where we've had no windows, but no worries, dad found a solution:
Also, replacing the windows has forced us to start stripping the siding. Although we no longer have the giant dumpster in the front lawn, we still manage to be the ghettoest house on the block. The neighbors have been doing very slow drive-byes. I guess you would too if the house looked like this.
Stay tuned for "after" pictures.
What's next after windows? Siding. And we're thinking white. What do you think?
