Wednesday, November 25, 2009

All's well that Windows.

Two weeks later. The window is in.
A project that started two weeks ago is finally finished. I wanted to get a window in the front of the camper, one because it look horrible with an old house AC unit hanging out the front and two because I want to do all the outside work before winter. It started out looking not too hard just tearing away the old AC and metal shims that the previous owner had installed and put 2lbs of caulking around. However it branched out into at least 3 or 4 other side projects.

After opening the window and finding rotted wood and also a rotted counter top I tore out most of everything that was there. My dad and I then built a new frame for the opening and also then had to build a new support structure for the new counter top. We visited a few window places with very little success, it turns out no one has windows 2 inches thick, and if they can get them it will cost around $200.

So we decided to visit our local Ace Hardware (Havelock). It was the first place we went where we were told "oh yeah no problem". Woo! The head honcho there, Dave, who is also good friends with a long time loyal customer my dad was more then happy to help. He also let us bring the camper to his own garage and use a tool called a Break. He also hooked us up with some free aluminum sheets to make our window pieces from. Thanks Dave! My dad and I both learned quite a bit about how to use a break which was great. We can even go back later to get more for the back window.

After getting the window skirts I got distracted by another project, scraping and re sealing the roof. Also I put in a really awesome skylight where there once was a defunct vent that would not open. We then got to work on building our window. We installed the window skirts we had just made got some plastic wood trim to build a interior frame\stop for our glass. Put in our piece of glass and then built and installed another frame\stop for the outside of the glass. While making sure to use silicon to water proof the whole thing.

After all is said and done we now have a really well built waterproof large window in the front of the camper. It feels great to walk by and see it now with all its window glory. We also have in a new counter top, fridge (from a break room in a going out of business beauty salon), skylight and a sealed up weather proof roof. None of which I could not have done with out lots of help from my Dad the support of my Mom and our local Ace Hardware.

Now its off to start on the rear window which currently sits boarded up and very ugly. We will fix all that though.






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