The Great Wall

She Says:

The time came for us to blow out the exterior wall of the great room.

So we did.

We took it down and got it back up within 48 hours.  I only had to spend one night with only a thin layer of plastic sheeting protecting me from all manner of raccoons, possums, wild pigs, and other critters that go bump in the night.

He Says:

Obviously, this house has major problems.  And it was major cheap.  It's thrown several dozen curveballs at us already, but we're confident now.

So, we wanted a really dramatic wall of windows in the front, and we wanted to relocate the front door, and we wanted a much larger and better-looking front door...all of which adds up to a complete new front wall.

We added several temporary ceiling support studs and then removed the front wall.

The Woman really got into it with the sawzall and ripped down the studs.  Indeed we did get the entire job done with 48 hours...it would have been 24 except for the mushrooms.

Mushroom!  Mushroom!

The rotten area behind the old front door, when excavated, revealed these:

Yes, those are the black mushrooms of death.  they were growing, upside-down, under our subfloor.  Ugh.

We ripped out the rotten subfloor, and the rotten rim joist.  Then we repaired with new wood and subfloor.    We framed it for 5 of the 36x72" casement windows we had bought, and our new door with doorlights.

With new wood in place, we built the new wall, and sheathed it...

...cut the openings for the windows..

...weatherproofed it...

...installed the windows...

...and the new door!

We're pretty darn happy with the way it turned out!

Garden Window

She Says:

In all the places we've lived, I've never had a window over the kitchen sink.  I know, so sad.  I've always wanted a place to grow an herb garden, arrange pretty colored glass bottles, and the like.  So HoneyDo ordered garden window for me to replace this one:

Now, after the sliding glass door install, this was a cinch.  The new window is a bit bigger all the way around than the existing one, and not in exactly the same place.  So we tore off some more siding, "repaired" the existing hole with plywood,

 measured and cut the correct sized hole,

installed the new header,

wrapped that part of the house with weather proof HardieWrap,

and cut the final hole through the wrap.  We made the cut in an X shape and then wrapped the pieces around the inside of the window and applied the flashing, making it all nice and water tight.

Then we acted silly for a bit.

Okay, back to work. 

HoneyDo came up with a great idea- we took some old tie down straps and screwed them to the stud and then to the window just in case the window tried to tip out while we were shimming and leveling it.

Once it was right where we wanted it, we screwed it into place, and voila!

 A lovely garden window, just for me!

He says:

A garden window is a really nice addition, and although it is more expensive then a regular window, it installs the same way.  After we finish the exterior siding, we will install a pair of braces that came with the window for extra support.