When I was in middle school, I would sometimes ride the bus home with my friend Nicky Oliverio. I am not sure where she is today, or what she is up to, but she was pretty awesome, so I hope one day she Googles herself and finds this. Anyways, the bus driver on her route was a countrified (a/k/a redneck, bless her heart), large older lady, and Nicky’s stop was the last one on the route. When we approached the stop, the bus driver would holler out to us, “Up yer winders!” and we had to go around closing all of the windows on the bus (which, if you will recall, would only open by sliding down, so to close them we had to slide them up, and if we didn’t do it the bus driver would have to do it herself before returning the school bus to wherever it is they sleep). We would grudgingly do so, muttering about how lazy she was. One day, she hollered, “Up yer winders!” but the driver’s window was also down, so Nicky shouted back, “Up yours!” I am not sure if she meant it as an insult, or if it was completely unintentional, but it was so funny to middle school me that I almost wet myself. So this post is about windows. Totally relevant, right?

Step one in Operation Master-ish Bathroom Renovation called for replacing the terrible, old, creaky, drafty, crank window. Just when you thought jalousie windows couldn’t get worse, someone went and made a terrible fake version of them. I do not like that person. I bought the new window last weekend, but The Boy put the kibosh on installing it then, so it waited until this weekend. Along with about 35 other ongoing projects that we made some serious progress on. Oh, and we might be turning this hall bath into a true master bathroom with a walk-in closet coming from the bedroom. Maybe. Because we have lost our minds. I need to convince The Boy before he has time to think about it. If the wall separating the two rooms mysteriously falls down while he is playing flag football, we will have no choice, right? Right. But more on that later.

Removing the old window (by the way, I keep typing “winder” and then changing it, which is making me chuckle every time) was easier this time. That makes it sound like we have tons of window (yep, did it again) replacing experience, which is not accurate. We did it once, in the kitchen, and it was kind of a nightmare. First, when removing a window, be sure to remove all screws that are holding the window into the frame. We removed one or two screws holding the kitchen window in place, could NOT figure out why the window wasn’t just FALLING out at that point, and took the reciprocating saw to it until it came out in pieces. Then we discovered some “hidden” screws holding it in place (not so hidden – we “looked” for them the way you “look” for a small child playing hide and seek, but they never made a noise so we never “found” them). This time we removed all of the screws, and hammered the frame until The Boy could pull it out from the outside. And then, there was a hole in our house. Again.

Screws – hiding in plain sight.

Does anyone feel a draft?

From here we shoved the new window into place (literally, there was a lot of whacking and smacking to get it into the right place). The window was the right size for the rough opening, and the flange is a little larger but is somewhat flexible, so sometimes you have to manhandle a window a little bit, show it who is boss, to get it to sit right.

No big deal.

The Boy looks polite here, but he punched that window a lot.

Once we had it in the right location, level, etc., it was a matter of pre-drilling a few holes, one trip to Home Depot, and several screws to hold it in place.

If you don’t get the self-tapping concrete anchors, the screws will not go in far enough for the window sliders to go past them. Another lesson learned in the Great Window Debacle of 2011. The Boy caulked around the window on the outside, and we called it a night. Obviously we still need to put trim around the window, a window sill, etc., but there is no longer a gaping hole in the house.

We totally upped our winder. So up yours.