Installing Windows

We brought some of our new windows home during the holidays.   We went with a stock size so we could afford to get bigger windows.   These are 36x60.   Lots of light!

The trick was how to install these very heavy windows in the 2nd story without dropping one or doing physical damage to any of us.

You have to install windows from the outside of the house so that you can seal them up tight against
the elements.



This means installation happens from a ladder.  But there's no way that even a strong guy can safely carry a big window up a tall ladder, swing it around, caulk the opening and install the window.    Without hurting something.
 

So Eric devised another plan, using two extension ladders, one in front of the other.

He set up a smaller ladder between the big ladder and the house.   He'll climb up the ladder with the yellow rope, which is set at a proper, safe distance from the house.  

The shorter red ladder is for holding the window.  At the top of that ladder, Eric put a Pivit Ladder Leveling tool.   That gave him a place to park the window until we got the rough opening caulked and ready to go.  

It worked this way:

1.  The girls and I carried the window to the rough opening.  Eric climbed the ladder.

2.  It took all three of us girls to lift the window, tilt it and get it through the rough opening, where Eric caught it and parked it on the Pivit, leaning against the house.  Claire and I held onto the window the whole time.

3.  Eric caulked around the sides and top and passed the caulk gun in to me, and I caulked the bottom of the opening.

4. Eric lifted the window into the opening, centered it and Claire and I pulled it into place. 

5. Eric nailed it into place. 

6. We cleaned  the smeared caulk off the windows with mineral spirits.   Installation is messy.

We installed 6 windows over that weekend.   Only 5 more to go and 3 of those are much smaller.  

Fascia Board

The fascia board on your house is the board that covers the rafter ends and is the board to which your gutters are connected.  

It's important.

It protects your rafter ends from exposure to wet and therefore rot.

We hate rot.

As you can see from the top pic, installing the fascia happens way up high.  Our boards were 16 ft long and had to be installed at the top of a second story.   

By one guy on a ladder.   Eric. 

Soooo, the first thing he did was make a jig.   Two, actually.  It's a piece of plywood with a notch cut out to hold the board up while he nailed it in place.   He screwed the jigs about 9 feet apart...

 ...and put a pulley between them. 

Then we roped the board in the center and Eric climbed the ladder while I pulled up the board with him. 

It worked brilliantly!

One thing we learned was to make sure the jigs weren't too high.   If they were, then the boards wouldn't slip in easily and that was a pain teeter tottering the heavy board and trying to hang on to the ladder while getting it all steady and then lifting into place.

If you place the jigs a bit low, then the boards pop in fast and you can shove a few shims in the jig under the board to raise the board into place while you nail.

It does mean moving the ladder back and forth a few times and it's slow, but it allows one person on a ladder and one on the ground to do the work safely.    Safe is good.

And now our fascia boards are on.    They'll be covered with metal when the metal roofing goes on.  Then the gutters can go on.