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Why I don't like doing windows
It's the perils of living in a house that's eighty years old, was underbuilt to begin with and has been abused over the years by craftsmen with more enthusiasm than actual skill.
Since the movie project is dying, slowly, painfully, kicking and screaming as the Gestapo of Mediocrity drags it off to the killing room and I've lost my motivation to write about it, I need some other diary to fill this space. Maybe...
House Diaries
It's a saga that reaches back to 1920, back when the house and the land upon which it was built was on the far reaches of a small town called Independence, an hour's drive by Model A Ford from Kansas City.
But that's later. Today, it's about windows, or more specifically, the window in our bedroom. The job was to replace two windows, one in our daughter's bedroom and one in ours, jalousie windows: perfect for greenhouses but bad for residences since they are nearly impossible to close completely.
Pretty straightforward, really: take out the old drywall; frame the new openings removing old framing as needed; put plywood and tarpaper over the holes where the old windows used to be; and install new cedar siding. We began the process on Friday night by removing the drywall on the affected walls. K's room went quickly. The studs were in good shape if a little too widely spaced by modern codes. I turned my attention to our bedroom, and that's when I found the termite damage.
Given time, a colony of termites can, by eating away all of the soft portions of the wood, reduce an 8' 2x4 to a hollow structure that crumbles away at a touch. As I inspected, though, my spirits began to rise. Poking with a knife blade, the damage didn't seem to be as bad as it appeared at first. I saw no live termites, and the tip of the blade struck solid wood nine times out of ten. I cleaned up and went to bed.
Saturday morning I arose, ate breakfast and made coffee, and got right to work. Removing the window in our room was a trial made harder by the fact that, having never been properly sealed against the weather, the nails holding it in place were rusted tight. Eventually though, it did come out, revealing more damage. Worse, it also revealed live termites.
By this time my father-in-law had arrived and begun working in K's room. A quick conference between him, me, and
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mljm ensued, and we decided to find out how extensive the damage was, and to replace whatever framing, siding and underlayment were needed. That entailed removing, by M's calculations, about seventy-five square feet of wall, and replacing the framing and underlayment for fifty, in an area roughly the shape (and size, it felt like) of Africa, from the start of the gable down to the sill plate. At this moment, our house has a large, ugly, tarpaper scar on the north wall, waiting for trim work and siding, but at least it's weathertight, and the new windows, Pella Low-E argon-filled double-pane Series 450's, are in.I started my day at 8:00 or so in the morning. We ended, the last tool put away at 10:30 at night. I slept little that night, the pain in my muscles making it impossible to find a comfortable position, even on our Sterns & Foster. The next morning, my hands were so tired and sore that I couldn't make a fist, and my legs were still shaky. Nevertheless, I finished the interior insulation and drywall, which are now ready for mudding and painting. This week, the exterminator comes for a visit.
Thank God for cool dry weather, which made having an 8 foot by 10 foot hole in the side of my house bearable. Thank God for my father-in-law, a man absolutely fearless on a ladder with a power saw. Most importantly, thank God for my wife, who supported us and who, through probably two hundred miles worth of driving, kept us supplied with drywall, plywood, studs, donuts, and Really Good Cheeseburgers.
This weekend: two more windows. Juuuuuust shoot me.
sympathetic
We currently still have a flagpole in the living room.
This past year we had to get a new roof put on.
The vibratory effects of a hundred mexicans with hammers dancing on top of the house caused a section of the plaster and lath ceiling in the living room to surrender to gravity.
Intially a piece the size of a dinner plate shattered to the floor, but a section the size of a chalk outline of Jimmy Hoffa is obviously tenuously only friction-fitted to it's neighboring lath.
A quick thought to grab a flat of plywood and a handy renfest flagpole has kept me so far from spending a week replastering the 25 X 18 ft ceiling in it's entirety.
SOME day, but not any sooner than I have to.
mmm, Culvers...