New Renovation, waterside windows for broad water views

before shot wall...before new window installation

Big days at Shore Side Farm House yesterday and today . I promised more photos and information on our laundry room/ pantry remodel, but instead that project is on hold. Demolition was the task of the day yesterday. Today much was removed and carted away from that demolition.  One of our major goals for renovation of this house, is to create water view living spaces to enjoy the waterside.  We want to live a life very aware of our natural surrounding and the elements we find there. We love to watch birds feed and fly by, we lose ourselves in the apricot sundowns and we enjoy watching the changes on the water.

Big windows will make all of this possible. After living here four years, we have finally found an appropriate window for that to happen.  Today marked the beginning of window installation. As you can see a small  22"x 32" window is the existing window. I refer to it as "the porthole". Through it you could see a little bit of the water, if you were standing up. Sitting at the kitchen table, you could see nothing but sky.

comforter tacked to the wall to maintain heat

  Layers of concrete siding, white pine beveled siding, tar paper, heavy plank sheathing and insulation had to be peeled away before the new windows could go in. One day was not adequate  to finish all the peeling away. At 7am this morning the process resumed; exterior demo completed about six hours later. We had a cold night last night, because the window was gone, replaced by heavy plastic, and the wall was without insulation. As the evening went on we finally installed a twin size comforter over the empty window spot, to cut down on heat loss. It worked extremely well for holding the heat in the house. It looked sad,as you can see in the photo but worked extremely well for stopping heat loss. Once the blanket went on the wall, the temps maintained enough for comfort through the evening.  It was weird to see a twenty year old blanket tacked on the wall, but it worked to keep us warm.

beginning of demolition concrete siding, small window

masonite sheathing around window, oh boy??

more layers of additional siding, tar paper,
beveled pine, yellow pine sheathing,, fiberglass insulation

You  might be thinking "what are these crazy people thinking, doing the window before finishing the laundry room?".  Starting another project before the last one is finished was a conscious decision. We are in the middle of a warm spell in the middle of winter. Its the end of January, and the temperatures outside are 50s - 60s! This is not normal. It is aberrant, and a blessing. The long forecast called for a week of this weather.  The window was sitting in the shed,so we decided that we might not get this opportunity again, until April. So, off came the siding and in went the window. As the next few posts will show it wasn't quite as fast as that, but Mr is still pretty impressive. Such a big change in such a short time period! Come back for the next few postings which will tell the rest of the story.