A Light in the Attic

Yes, folks, the train is rolling again!

When you spend a solid two months  of your renovation in some odd state of chaos, where projects are determined at random and tend to be nearly invisible after completing them, it sure feels good get to something big done...and yesterday we did! 

Despite my parents warnings at the beginning of this project about how winter would be slow and disheartening - nothing exciting about spending an entire afternoon chiseling away pieces of the ceiling framing to make it perfectly level - I, of course, let it get to me.  Really, though, it takes a warrior not to loose steam when you know your Saturday will be spent filling in missing pieces of insulation or hanging more can lights (those suckers have the most annoying wobbly legs) or any other odd tasks that begs the question, when is sheetrock going in??

BUT yesterday?  We did WINDOWS.  And you know what?  We all eight of the downstairs replacements in one single day.  Bam!  And finally, I have something exciting to take a photo of, and thus, a reason to blog. 

Our beautiful house was blessed with some beautiful 78 inch tall windows all around it's downstairs, but sadly, over the years the pulley systems gave out on one end or another and they were painted shut (in red, then in black, then blue, the green, the white...).  We considered having them re-weighted and hung, but we also considered our budget and the relative energy savings we would encounter if we switched to something 100 years newer.  Or really, Dad did, but I didn't fight him on this one.  We did leave the original large square windows at the front of the home with their leaded glass panes because that represents a huge portion of the homes great character, but the other 9 windows downstairs we decided to swap out (or add in as two of the windows were missing all together).

We started in the morning with Dad's enthusiastic welcome greeting ("Today, we are doing windows!"), and hit the ground running, me helping Dad build the frames while Todd worked one window ahead of us, ripping out the old frame and the mounds of demo crud that was inevitably sitting atop each one.  Just when you think the house is getting cleaner....

By lunchtime, we had two windows in place, and then by 3pm we had five.  

At 3pm, I was beginning to doubt our ability to finish in one day, and dusk was already threatening, but we pursued.  

Now that we really had a rhythm to our work, we were really starting to move along.  The last two windows in the music room went up like lightning.  Booyah!  All in a days work.  

We still have to add a bit of trim along the outside to cover some gaps (the windows the company sent were a bit different in size than the test window Dad ordered last summer), but wow - what a difference it makes to have clean, usable windows in the place.

BEFORE - KITCHEN WINDOW

BEFORE - KITCHEN WINDOW WAS TOTALLY MISSING

BEFORE - KITCHEN WINDOWS

BEFORE - KITCHEN WINDOWS

AFTER - KITCHEN WINDOWS. Who wouldn't be excited about all that natural light??

AFTER