I haven’t posted in forever, so let me start getting things caught up, starting with the wide window that will go over the bath tub in the main bathroom. It’s a 64″ x 16″ picture window situated above head height so it will have the necessary privacy while still bringing in natural light. The existing window was a square of glass block with a louvered glass vent in the center. That was put in place of an original window that was a portrait shape but smaller than the other windows in the house, so this is the third shape/style of window that’s going into this location.
As with all of the other windows, removing the existing window took about three minutes with a crowbar. The only difference is that this time I also needed to remove some plywood that had been used to fill the space of the original window. I used the laser level to cast the same top height as the other windows, then measured up for the header and down for the sill. I had to cut out a few studs for this window, given how much wider it is than its predecessors. First I framed in the new header and jack studs, added plywood sheathing to fill in the top and bottom where the old window was, then I used the reciprocating saw to cut back the sheathing in the resultant opening from the inside.
The next step, which proved the most time-consuming part of the process, was removing all of the siding from this section. I had originally assumed this would be fairly easy, given it’s a fairly small window, but there was the added challenge of it being on the side of the house (on the second floor), with very little room to have a ladder at a safe angle. When I previously removed the bump-out, I put up house wrap up to cover the sheathing until we are ready to put up new siding. Since that was only a few feet from the edge of the window, it made sense to remove all the siding between the window and the section already covered in house wrap. I had to move the ladder around a lot to get all of the siding off, chucking the pieces into the hole and making a big messy pile inside.
Eventually I got it cleared down to the boards, got the nails pried out or banged back in, and got the house wrap over the whole area. Unrolling a section of house wrap while up on a ladder, where the house wrap actually has to go behind the ladder, and getting it stapled up evenly, is a bit tricky. Out of maybe a twenty times I’ve put sections of house wrap on this house, I think it’s been windy nineteen of them.
Only then did I realize I’d made a mistake. I’d measured exactly where the bottom sill board should go, then cut back the studs to that height and made the opening accordingly. The problem is, that line was actually supposed to the top of the sill, not the bottom. As a result, I had to remove the sill, re-cut the studs an inch-and-a-half shorter, put the sill back in, then re-cut back the sheathing. Fortunately I didn’t get even further along before realizing what I’d done.
Window installed
Once that was done, the rest of the window went down the same way as the previous ones. I put in the plywood jamb extensions, installed the two inches of rigid poly-iso foam to the outside, taped the drain pan and sides to the foam, then added the temporary wooden brackets to allow the window to be put in from the inside and protrude on the outside an inch or so, which gives me the room I need to clip on the window installation brackets from the outside. Finally, I screwed all the brackets in, securing the window, and taped the edges of the window to the foam. I’ll come back around and put spray foam around all the windows from the inside at the same time, since the cans (or at least the straws) are pretty much one-shot.
From the outside