New windows

The front of the house is an entryway with a closet and a second room we use as a study. It has the desk, compute and piano in it, along with 6oo books. This area used to be the front porch of the house. It was closed in at some point, on the cheap. The windows are old crank out things that leak like crazy. Also a couple of them have stripped gears in the crank mechanism, so they don't really close well. In summer it's not such a big deal, but in winter, it's murder. We've used screws to more firmly secure them, but they still let a lot of air circulate around them.

So this month I finally have gotten around to begin replacing them. I started with the single on the driveway side of the house in the study. That went pretty smoothly. This weekend I am going to replace the one on the left front of the house, in the study also. It's a 52 inch wide opening with a single crank window currently, but I have opted to use two 24 inch wide vinyl replacement windows, and will place a small divider between them to close the gap. I am hopeful that it won't look too queer when it's done.

There are two huge, ancient holly bushes on either side of the front steps, right in front of the windows to be replaced. They were in sad shape when we arrived, but we have left them alone and they have begun to fill out. Sadly, though, I'm going to rip them out for my convenience in this project. I made a trip to Asheville this morning to buy the replacements. I had hoped to use the truck to just jerk the bushes out. I had some nice sturdy link-chain handy, and I knew the chain saw had a dull chain, so I wanted to avoid trying to use it for the job. But I couldn't find any links to join the chain ends together. I had to make a run to Henson's for a couple of clasps. The mechanism worked fine, but...The bushes are so well-rooted in that they didn't budge. So I had to make another run out to get a new chain for the saw, and install it. Once in, it worked great and made mulch of the bush in no time. We'll replace the old shrubs with something new when everything is done. Once the shrub was down, I pulled of the exterior trim around the window. So far so good.

By then it was time to make a run to pick up Eli and Briggs from their buses. So I won't try to do anything else this evening. I intend to jump on it in the morning and have it done over the weekend. Here's hoping there are no surprises along the way.