Window Installation in GIFs

This is the equivalent to a "latergram"...we'll call this a "laterblog" as I am currently live blogging our window experience...two days ago.

They showed up on time, which alone is a miracle these days and got right to it.  Then we heard "awww, shit!!!!!!"  Not quite what you want to hear when people are tearing apart your house.  Then one of them ran downstairs and asked if we had wasp spray.

Apparently, there was a nest "as big as his head" under one of our shutters.   The Mr ran up the street to grab some, and they saturated it and got back to work.

As of right now, they're pounding out the trim frame on the bedroom one.  I think the weekend is catching up to me because I'm super tired and there's nowhere to escape to for a nap. 

They took the shutters down, and one was totally saturated.  As was our outdoor art, which the Mr sprayed off because that stuff would've eaten through it if it sat on there.  At $200 a pop, I would not have been a happy girl.  I was kind of irritated at how much was dripping down all over the slider screen and clogging it up, and then I remembered, "Hey, I don't have to clean that...they're removing it!"  That's one way to get out of cleaning. 

It was about 3 1/2 hours before they had both upstairs windows out.  The music they have playing is quite interesting.  A mash of rockabilly, country, classic rock with an Appalachian backwoods flair.

The amount of crap raining down from the upstairs window over the patio was seriously stress-inducing. Oh God, it's still happening.  What IS that!?  I keep looking at the Mr with wide, horror-filled eyes.  He's looking now...he said it looks like caulk and/or trim.

Now they're doing the reciprocating saw on the kitchen window.  It is truly terrifying.  Caulk raining on one side of me and shims and a window about to drop out on the other side.

They got the kitchen window in and out pretty easily.  When he brought the new window in, he remarked how heavy the window was for something so small which is what we paid for.  Thankfully, they weren't as dark as I feared.  We got triple-paned, double strength glass windows.  Triple paned doesn't really do much energy efficiency-wise but makes a huge difference in sound which is what we need then you do the double strength and it's like the mac daddy window.  For $730 per window, that's a bargain.

Then they pulled out the slider that Lowes installed 8-9 years ago.  They said we had that replaced just in the nick of time.  1)  They didn't install flashing around it at all and they tried to level it using caulk which is no bueno.  2)  We didn't know there was something wrong until 8ish months later when it began raining INSIDE of the door during a bad storm because they didn't smooth out the caulk they put on top.  Just zig-zagged it and left it there.  3)  There was the beginning of rot happening from water sitting behind the sheeting which we'd just seen the damage that could do on a recent episode of Holmes Makes It Right.  It basically disintegrates the house.  This is not Lowes fault as a company, it's the piss poor subcontractors they hired.  Lord knows how many people are stuck with similar results while they were under their employment.  The one guy explained all of it to us and said we probably wouldn't have lasted another rainy season without damage starting to eat away at it.  We also got the delightful news that when the subcontractors cut the siding for the old slider, they cut it crooked so there's a crap ton of caulking that has to fill in the gaps because it wasn't big enough to replace the wood there.  So now we have to paint around it.  I'm hoping the paint we already have that is supposed to match our siding actually does because I don't have it in me to do one more friggin' paint match round at Home Depot.

They just brought the slider around back.  Two skinny dudes and they're like "we might need to check the foundation before we install this thing!"  It is quite a monster but we at least feel like it's being done right this time.

They've gone to lift this thing 4x now.

"1...2...3..."

"1...2...3..."

"1...2...3..."

"1...2...3..."

They finally got it in place and thankfully we didn't even have to move the beastbrella.  I wasn't moving that thing for the 7th/8th time this year unless they begged me to.  They were able to maneuver around it and the guy is putting up new interior trim as I type as well as outdoor flashing that should've been there the whole time.

The indoor guy was jamming to our Music Choice 80's station as he was caulking.  He took us on a tour of the new windows and doors feature-wise and all of that.  The sound dampening is pretty good.  We don't hear most cars driving by and the wind was gusting pretty hard but we'd never know it.  Even the yappy dog across the street that must aggressively announce when it has entered the outside realm wasn't audible.  I'm sure we won't luck out as much with the neighbors bigger dog when she gets home.  There was a car with the boom that went past and unfortunately we could still hear it but considerably less.  The only downside is I can't hear the UPS man pull up anymore until he gives a limp attempt at a knock...if he bothers so I'll have to keep the door cracked on the days we're expecting packages.

We seemed to get out completely unscathed with this project!

Then the Mr went to put the kitchen blind back up.  It didn't fit.  They added decorative trim to the inside of the window (that wasn't needed) and ended up taking away almost 2" we needed to put the blind back up!  We just bought this blind last year so I feel like that amount should be taken off of our total since it fit fine prior to that and I've now had to live with a towel over the new window for the last two days.  You would think they'd know that adding trim would take away from that area but I don't think we should have to pay to replace a perfectly good blind because it wasn't thought through on their part. 

When I relayed this to The Mr, he looked a little horrified at my suggestion.

I'm sorry but the owner dude measured 2-3x when doing the window dimension estimate with all of the blinds up, never said "hey if we need to add trim you might need new blinds" and the blind is basically brand new.  He also found that the screen door on the $2700 slider was loose-ish and possibly ripped in the lower corner.  The Mr emailed them and let them know of the issues so we'll see.  As of now, we haven't heard back but they don't have the rest of our money yet so...

We rounded out the evening by getting in our final Dance Dance Revolution session with our huge metal mats.

We just don't have the room to store them anymore and I've used them as my "mirror" to check my form as I worked out.  It also has our dog's paw prints on them so it was kind of hard to give them up, but it was time.  Also, the next day we found out the hard way why keeping them isn't practical for our old asses.  Sigh.  Hopefully, someone will get some use out of them in a wave of nostalgia.

Have you had a big ticket item replaced recently or have it on the to do list?

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