Remodeling - Windows (part II)

Progress has been made.  Project is more or less done.  Now i'm trying to piece my house and life back together.  With this comes pictures!  It's looking fantastic right now.  The fumes from the stain are gone and i'm no longer getting high!  I'm not sure if i'm going to post pics of the rest of the windows with their blinds on or even the glass block in the basement or not.  I know i would love to get nicer wood blinds but not sure when that'll happen.  These were significantly cheaper than the roughly $180 per wood ones i was looking at.  The wood ones look fantastic buuuuuut this project has cost me enough already.

Slowly but surely i'm also replacing outlets which are in bad shape while my house is in disarray.  As i piece stuff back together i'm also cleaning the shit out of it all to get rid of the dust and also because i've not been awesome about cleaning the past couple years (or ever).  Doubt i'll ever post pics of when things are 100% done because they'll honestly never be done!

Through all of this, the work has been done in a reasonable amount of time and wasn't as big of a nightmare as it could have been for me.  Considering what got done, things stayed pretty clean which is remarkable.

This is the window facing onto my enclosed front porch facing west.  This would be the south west corner of the house.  This will be one of the main windows giving me fresh air during summer as i geek out on my computer in the corner.  The white is mud from where they're patching the damage to the plaster.  It'll look better when i finally paint this summer.

This is my upstairs window facing south.  The walls look muuuuuch better than they really are.  Some nasty ass wood paneling on them from god knows when.  This window was completely shot originally.  This is also the one that gets hit with the most sun year round.  Really need to get some blinds up there so the neighbors don't think i'm creepier than i already am.

Here you will see two windows that face onto the front porch.  The TV is normally in front of them and these windows have never been usable for airflow for me.  They've always been drafty.  The heat thermostat is about another 2 feet away from the edge of the picture.  Always the draftiest room in the house.

My bedroom downstairs window is the one that had the most plaster damage around it.  Very impressed with how it came out.  Coincidentally, the white from the patching makes it look like i've got some kind of cloud theme going in my room which i very much do not!








Finally here's that same window after i got the blinds put on.  These were a different style of blinds which i've never used before.  The instructions said to use a 1/16" drill bit.  Wrong!  Ruined one of the screw heads in the process.  Wound up going through 5 bits before settling on a 1/8" bit.  This took me 45 minutes to get the blinds in this window!  It had to get easier than this otherwise i was going to cry!!!  These blinds enable me to now have some privacy in my bedroom and blocks out the damned alley light!

The south window downstairs is another window that always gets hammered by the elements.  I had replaced it with a chap vinyl window a couple of years ago as a band aid.  As you can see there was some mild plaster damage from the work around the window but nothing too bad.  It's going to be fantastic once I get around to painting.  I like this pic the most because it shows how well the stained oak matches the original pine.  I accidentally matched them up almost perfectly!

Here is what it looks like afterwards with some blinds on.  Only took me 10 minutes (a far cry from 45 min before) to hang these while stopping long enough to mix myself a drink.  Yay for privacy!!!

Remodeling - Windows (in progress)

A virtual tour of some of the work being done at my house this week.  I'm having the original windows (metal counterweights and all) replaced with energy efficient ones.  With the house being almost 100, this project is also doing a bit of damage which will be repaired once all is said and done.  The wood work was not salvageable and so the trim around the windows is going to be replaced.  Here's what i came home to the other night...

Living room:

This is the window to the right of my front door.  It opens onto my enclosed front porch facing west.  You can see my computer desk which is normally in the corner.  This means no desktop computer at home in the interim. :(  At least i have my laptop to play with!

 This is the other window in that room which faces south.  Prior to this project, this was the only window that had a screen on it and was usable for air flow during summer.  If my computer desk were in the corner again, this would be to my left and i could easily see the damn bunnies in my side garden!

These windows are to the left of my front door and face out onto my enclosed porch (west again).  It's in this area that I consistently felt a chill during winter months.  Again, these windows no longer had functional screens so they were closed year round.  Needless to say, the airflow will be nice this summer!



Mess in living room:

You can see my new love seat stacked on top of my new couch to make room for the work.  Also got my coffee table covered in more crap than usual right there.  Yeah.  It's a mess.

Here's my computer desk pulled out with Smokey inspecting the work.  No sense in moving this bulky thing back into place until it's all done.  I've got a bunch of cords that need to be re-plugged when it's done.  Having the 2 windows right there by my desk will be nice though.

Bedroom:

My bedroom on the first floor faces east towards the alley.  Not having any blinds up right now means the neighbors get a free peep show if i'm not careful!  You can see how much of the plaster came off when they took the trim boards off.  That's the joys of an old house.  It'll be patched soon but was quite a heart breaker when i initially saw it.

Notice next to no mess on the floor that night?  Very impressive job cleaning up after doing work.  I would have endured a mess but nice to have courtesy like this.  :)

Cats helping:

Smokey decided he needed to sit on the arm of the couch as i was putting the love seat on top of it in preparation for this project.  You can't see the drool in this picture but it was there!

Shadow decided to investigate things as i was taking a break.  On the floor is a glass with my "beverage".  :)

Bottled water consumption

A friend sent me link to more information on the topic of water consumption.

What caught my eye about the topic is that everyone seems to forget that they get water from their food too.  Does a person who eats salad and lots of fruits need as much water.  Theoretically no because the food they're consuming is heavy in water to begin with.

I guess what I'm focusing in on are the people who pound water all day.  It should be a gradual process.  I know people who believe they should have a specific amount drank by different times of the day and if you disrupt their routine they'll go mental.  How can this be healthy?  All they hear is "drinking water is bad for you" when i say "forcefully drinking that much water in a limited time frame is probably bad for you".  Maybe they couldn't hear me because of the sounds of water sloshing around.  :)

Most importantly on this topic are those that consume bottled water.  Go to a grocery store and stand in the soda/water isle for a couple of minutes.  You're bound to see someone come up and grab multiple cases of water.  If I'm in a more affluent part of town, it's my observation that I'll see this even more.

This brings up the bottle vs tap argument.  I'm not sure whether people are using bottled water as a status sign, or if they're lazy, or if they're that clueless and so they buy into the propaganda.

I say "status sign" because it appears that people go out of their way to show they're drinking their bottle of water everywhere that they go.  As though they're soooooo healthy that they need to flaunt that they're not putting that low brow toxic stuff in their system.  Watch them.  They display their bottles very prominently in meetings and even on their desk.  Like coffee cups of yesteryear, your bottle of water reflects what you're trying to say about your lifestyle.

I said "lazy" because there are a lot of people who use it for the convenience factor.  As soon as their done with their serving, maybe they'll even throw it in a recycling bin.  It frightens me when i see this happening in homes.  Grab the bottle because it's more convenient than actually filling a glass.  That's OK though because it'll get recycled (hopefully) when they're done and they'll grab a fresh one in a couple of hours.  Yes I'm calling you lazy if you do this.  Get over it.  You've got a million excuses but in the end you know they're pretty flimsy.

There's countless sites dedicated to the argument of bottle vs tap.  Those that are adamant about using bottled don't use them though and prefer to use the facts written on the labels or information that "someone told me a while back but i don't remember who or when" which is usually code for THIS IS BULLSHIT COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH BUT IT SOUNDS GOOD.  I find it ironic that in the easy access information age that we are in today how few people fact check stuff even after they're called out on it.

I'm not saying drinking water is bad.  That much should be obvious.  I'm saying that the hype about how much you should drink is incorrect.  I'm also saying that people need to stop buying multiple cases of bottled water at a time because they're wasting their money on a product who's packaging does more harm than good.

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About me:  I have a case of water in my freezer since it's summer time and I can pull a frozen bottle out and have it be cold in a couple of hours after sitting in a cooler.  I also use those frozen bottles in coolers instead of buying ice packs because as serve a dual purpose of chilling things and when they thaw I can drink them.  I strongly prefer my water to be cold.  I have a bottle on my desk every day that starts off frozen and I refill it constantly so the water stays cold as the ice melts.  I do this to cut back on my soda intake which has been known to hit 6-7 cans a day easily.  I also take my bottles home with me, fill them up from the tap and toss them in the freezer for the next day.  When they are all gone I will be using old soda bottles.  I do this because there is no reasonable source of ice cubes throughout the day for me at work.  I'm anti plastic whenever possible and work to minimize that type of packaging in my life.

You may now attack my views.