Installing windows

Episode 34 will be delayed again - sorry! - because once again the time I had set aside for writing this weekend got consumed by a real-world task that could not wait. (I will try for Thursday of this week.)

Some friends who are moving had a handyman failure; as is often the case when renovating a house to be sold, they have a set of build dependencies that required this window to be replaced in a hurry in order to not slip the schedule for other renovations, so I volunteered to take care of it.

Yuck.

Living in a 112 year old house myself, I am used to doing archaeological investigations of the strange decisions made by previous owners. This window, though obviously an old single-paned window, did not look like it was original to the 120-year-old house. It was the wrong size for the rough opening; the hinges looked more modern than turn-of-the-century, and so on.

Sure enough, when disassembled there was a gap behind the trim that was insulated with crumpled newspapers from 1957. Oddly enough they were Pittsburgh newspapers from different days; perhaps the owners of the house in 1957 moved from Pittsburgh, replaced a window, and insulated the gaps with the packing paper they moved with? It's a mystery.

Having zero haircuts since quarantine began has done wonders for my hair.

New window in and trimmed - obviously the paint will need to be redone but that's why the window had to go in before the painters arrived.

And the interior needs a little more drywalling and priming before it is ready for painting, but it is 1000000x better than before at least.

The neighbours in the blue house apparently asked my friends for my contact information as they also have a window that needs replacing. I am quite chuffed. I had my friends pass along that I only do windows as a favour, but I would be happy to design them a programming language for hire should they need one of those.

Next time: Gosper's algorithm, finally!