window, living room (rear) – from outside – IMG_3685 (20111014)
Image by Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos (ClintJCL)
Our rear living room window, now repainted, from the outside. The only true single-pane window left in the house; this one would be over 00 to replace thanks to government building codes requiring much more expensive tempered glass to be used, because this window is over stairs and could hurt someone on the stairs when it breaks. So government safety regulations actually made it so expensive to replace that we changed our mind and didn’t — actually making things less safe and less energy efficient. This is how government regulation often has the opposite effect, and is not a magic answer to all societal problems.
Oops, painted this window shut too.
Sacrificial boards are used a lot in my house. I guess it’s an "old wood window thing". I paid a good + for another piece of crown moulding to put over the sill. The idea is that the sacrificial wood rots before the actual sill. In this window’s case, the old sacrificial board was so rotten you could rip it off the nails and into pieces with your pinky finger. The sill itself was rotted out too. I spent a week or two building it up with successive layers of Elmer’s wood filler. It kept raining on my wood filler and I’d have to start over! Eventually, though, it was built up enough to be flat enough to nail a NEW sacrificial board to. Hopefully this is the last paint job this sill will ever need. At some point in the future when we have more disposable income, we’ll replace this window. (We need about ,000 in new windows, so it’s going to be awhile…)
You can also see the chimney to our old boiler. I actually had an ex-friend argue with me in the past about whether that that’s what this was. Not sure why people think I don’t know my own house. This chimney once tried to kill me by being blocked up and filling the house with diesel fumes. Fortunately the smoke was thick enough to break the laser on our cd player, turning the music off so that I was able to hear the carbon monoxide alarm. I was sleeping in the basement. Carolyn was upstairs. I probably would have left her a widow if that alarm hadn’t gone off. We don’t use a boiler or CD players anymore. Heat pumps are way safer in terms of CO2.
You can also see the soffit damage due to raccoons, as well as some leftover rope from the "roof tarp years". That rope came in handy when painting!
The gutters for this part of the house rotted off. Estimate for just that one ~6-foot section of gutter to be replaced? 0! Ouch! The parts are less than 0! I’ve seen gutter crimpers in use. It shouldn’t cost THAT much. I think if I just had "a guy" come do it, instead of a licensed business — that it would be way cheaper.
boiler chimney, house maintenance, living room window, raccoon damage, sacrificial board, soffit.
back yard, Clint and Carolyn’s house, Alexandria, Virginia.
October 14, 2011.
… Read my blog at ClintJCL.wordpress.com
… Read Carolyn’s blog at CarolynCASL.wordpress.com
BACKSTORY: So our homeowners insurance (Farmers) got dropped due to having peeling paint on our window sills (among other things). Weak. It was a LOT of work AND money for us to repaint all our sills. Wood windows SUCK!! Modern vinyl windows are MAINTANENCE-FREE!! Wood windows… You gotta re-glaze the panes when they fall out, and then the wood itself is always going to slowly rot away. We already had our cats knock a pane out, so we already had glazing compound for pane repairs. This came in handy when we painted our various window sills, as some also needed glazing compound.
It was quite a pain because it cost so much money and had our living room in disarray for so many months, and the whole insurance basis for the situation was pretty bullshitty in the first place. We’re not going to make a property damage claim due to moisture that occurs because our windows let in moisture because their paint was peeling! Ridiculous… Is paint really all that’s holding us back from having property damage through our windows? I DON’T THINK SO, as no moisture was getting in prior to repainting. Just total hassling from Farmers *AND* Progressive Insurance. NationWide, however, appears to finally be on my side.
