#NewWindows2016

antique window weights

Mother nature has a way of teasing here in New England in the Fall. You'll get a warm day and then the temperatures will drop to the 30s. Maybe you'll even get hail. Sometimes you will look outside your window in the morning and see shockingly blue sunny skies, but you'll step outside and realize it was a trick! It's actually blustery and freezing. Lots of us have good warrior-like intentions of not turning the heat on until a certain date. Here at the Nest, we were thinking that we might hold out till November first this year. Turning the heat on seemed so unreasonable at the time since I can't have insulation put in until the electricians are finished, and their job is taking much longer than expected. Not to mention the windows. The windows at The Nest are all original single pane, weighted windows. very charming in theory, but not very good at keeping the inside in, and the outside out. In fact, some of the windows sashes were removed from the frames and completely missing glass.

not cozy

But when the temps dropped near freezing for the second time, we had to cave. The heat had to come on. And something had to be done about the windows!

I was planning to replace every window before the cold weather set in. Unfortunately, due to cost it turns out that the job will have to wait. In case you were wondering, money doesn't grow on trees! Plus, since I'm a landlady now, this change of plans didn't just affect me. I had the tenants to take care of too. And I hated breaking the news that the windows would have to wait. After an evening or two of heated brainstorming, we decided we would just seal up the existing windows to buy me some time to get good sustainable financing lined up to do the project. That will have to wait at least 6 months because of my current debt to income ratio yadda yadda yadda.

But the climate inside the house was getting more difficult to ignore. It was getting pretty breezy!

So one Friday, mom and I went around our apartment lowering all the storm windows that were in decent enough shape to move. Some of them looked a little dicey. Then we caulked all the windows shut. It was fun at first! But then it got a little tedious. We were glad to be done!

But there were still missing panes of glass in four of the windows! Bill measured the sashes and bought glass at Ace Hardware from a very grouchy but effective employee who worked in the garden level workshop there. Bill secured the panes in place with points and caulking. All those things combined made it feel pretty cozy in here after all! We will do the plastic too at some point.

traveling with fragile cargo! at least its only 2 blocks!

A few weeks ago, I worked all day at my second job and Bill spend the day doing carpentry prep work for the electricians. Oh, and remember how I said some of the storm windows looked dicey? Yea, well the second floor window that hangs right above my car parking spot was one of the dicey ones. While I was at work a big gust of wind caught the storm window and it sailed to the ground, smashing exactly where the windshield of my car would have been if I was at home!! Bill texted me and I was just so grateful that I wasn't home. I don't know if I could have handled that!

Then it was time to take care of the tenants. After I was done seeing patients that day, I rushed home and changed into ratty jeans and a UVM hoodie, gave Bill a smooch, then we got to work. We sealed all the windows in the apartment with shinking plastic. I used a step stool to place tape around the perimeter of the window frame, then Bill followed behind, cut the plastic to size (like a huge sheet of saran wrap), and used my hair dryer to shrink it into place. Luckily, the job one a little bit faster than we expected. But still we were not finished plasticing windows till after the sunset. Finally we were done and we marched upstairs to celebrate and have dinner that had been cooking in the crock pot. Spaghetti Swquash and Meatballs. It's hard not to be smug when you planned ahead and had a slam dunk dinner ready to be devoured after doing a job like that. We rested our bones, but that wasn't the end of our night! We finished up the night rehearsing for our live music yoga class scheduled for the following weekend. (which, by the way, was a total blast!).

Of course, the week after we put all the plastic up the weather turned warm again and the temperature change made our plastic sag and wrinkle. We pouted, but what can you do?

Obviously this is just the beginning of the windows saga, just the first chapter of #NewWindows2016!

my BFF this season. brr!