From our estimates, the last time this house had any sort of renovation work done (besides painting) would have had to be been the 60’s or 70’s. Do you know what was in fashion back then besides flares and denim? Aluminium windows. This house was full of them, and some of them quite large at that. There is nothing wrong with aluminium windows. Now, that is, but back then, they just weren’t made to last. Every single window showed major wear and tear.

The windows in our house were a great example of that. You would go to open one of them only to have the sliding panel tilt at an ungodly angle and get stuck. Others you would have to lift so you could drag it across as they had long passed the stage of sliding. The best part is they all had different security keys and mechanisms, as if they were bought individually over time, or picked up as left overs from other construction projects. We knew they would have to go, but it was at the back of our list until other work got done.

Then we got hit by the East Coast Low. It was soon clear that a few of the windows were less than water tight, and so the windows became a priority. It’s a good thing we are friendly people, and had gotten to know our neighbours.

Ahmed is one of our neighbours. He is an older Lebanese gentleman who at one point spoke eight different languages until a stroke affected his speech centres. These days, he installs windows for a living. That’s correct. Right next door is a tradesman will the skills that we need (and as it turns out our other nearby neighbours are carpenters, mechanics, electricians… guess that makes me the computer guy). After speaking with him, he offered to hook us up at a great deal. I’m not kidding. We barely know them, but as a neighbourly gesture he offered us the windows at cost price. We couldn’t say no to that.

A huge split in the window frame.

A huge split in the window frame.

Not quite smooth sailing

Unfortunately on the day the windows were to be installed, we met two problems. One: the existing window sills are pushing 90 years old. While for most there were no issues, the older frames didn’t cope so well with the stress of the old windows being removed. Some of the wood split significantly under the strain. No one’s fault, but it required some major patching work. We still haven’t fixed the front room window sill, but the study came up surprising well. Lots of Polyfilla. Lots and lots.  It helps that the frame is obscured by the new blinds quite well. In fact you would hardly know what happened now. But the cracks in the window sills were the least of our problems.

Half way through the day, poor Ahmed hit a snag. Three of the windows came back from the factory the wrong size. The dimensions for width and height had been swapped, so now the windows were too tall and too narrow. Normally this isn’t a huge deal, except that they had already pulled out the living room window. Ahmed couldn’t exactly put it back in, so we were left with a sheet of plastic for a few weeks until the replacement windows arrived. Thankfully, we had not much rain, and although things got noisy with the windy days, everything worked out fine.

We love our new windows

They work. They look really stylish. Eventually they will be the same colour as the roof (once we re-coat it). They are all keyed the same, and most importantly they don’t leak. We just got back from ducking next door to pay Ahmed, and were bombarded by date pastries and sugar-coated pistachio treats.

I’m pretty sure I’m lapsing into a sugar coma.