the little things

Back when we were going to sell the house and move the the country, we had our “to do” list for the house down to about a half dozen things that we felt were required in order to sell the house. Once it was determined that was not going to happen and I was staying here, I started taking a closer look around. I now have over three dozen items on the list. I’m not capable of doing all of these things, but I’m on the hook for about half of them. And, I’m happy to report I did one of them today.

One of our crank windows was broken (the hinge part was off the track). After a little research, I found that you could get replacement hinges, so I did just that. Jake was supposed to help me with it because the screws on the bottom track were rusted and were going to be a bit of a challenge to get out. He wasn’t home this afternoon, but I decided to get my head around the project and figure out what needed to be done. I had to open the window in order to do that and somehow the window got stuck. While getting it unstuck, I snapped the top track off and the window was dangling by the piece of metal attached to the crank. I needed a screwdriver in order to unhook it, so I had to balance the window in the opening in order to grab one. Luckily, it did not fall out while I was gone.

I detached the window and decided to watch a video on how to replace the hinge and tracks. It looked pretty easy, so I started to work on it and figured if I got stuck Jake could help me when he got home. The only challenge, then, was the rusty screws. I had some sort of drill bit that allowed me to extract two of them and then I took the Dremel to the other two and got those out, too. I installed the new tracks and hinges and then popped the window back in and hooked it to the crank. It was surprisingly satisfying. And, now the window works. It has been broken for years, so this was a nice win.

One of the other things on my list is to recaulk all of the windows. I figured what better time than the present since I was already working on the window. I scraped the old stuff off the window I fixed and also did the picture window since it was right next to it. I had to take a break to make supper, but I was able to caulk both of the windows after eating. There are a bunch more windows to do, of course, but at least the project is underway now. I have been putting it off all summer and now I’m running out of time!