Installing The New Kitchen Window

Once Dan finished replacing the rotted floor joists, he was ready to install the new window. Before he could begin however, two decisions had to be made. The first, was placement. The window could either be centered on the inside wall, or it could be centered on the outside wall. To center on the inside wall, meant centering it between the corner of the room and the new load bearing support post. The problem with this, was that it placed the window very near a corner on the outside.

Dan preferred centering it on the outside, for construction reasons. If we centered it from an inside perspective, he was afraid there wouldn’t be room to work in that corner. I favored centering it on the interior wall, largely for design purposes. If we centered it on the outside, the window would be visually offset inside the kitchen. It was only a matter of 6 inches, but to me, they were an important 6 inches, especially since that window wall would be finished differently than the rest of the walls.

The second problem was that we have standard, 4 inch deep walls. The window was made for 6 inch walls. It was the thing I hadn’t thought of when I bought the window. The challenge was how to accommodate a 6 inch window in a 4 inch wall.

Either way, the first step was to remove the old window and tear down the rest of the old wall. This was accomplished with a crow bar.

Dan had already taken down the interior wall when he did the repairs. That left the vinyl siding which was nailed on top of the original, lap siding. There was neither sheathing nor felt paper. At first he wondered if he might be able to use the old siding as sheathing, but it was in such bad shape that it all had to come down.

After that it was time to build a new wall, and frame out a place for the new window. After a lot of discussion, Dan did indeed place the new window location in the center of the interior wall. He wasn’t sure he could do it, but my faith in his ability to make it happen, was equal to his faith in me when it comes to buying the windows!

This time we will have a properly framed window. The wall isn’t up yet, so you can see in the above photo, that the window is centered on the inside wall, and right up against the outside corner.

Of course we had snoopervision…..

Sheathing was nailed up on the outside….

And then felt paper.

We used felt paper instead of house wrap because of cost.

The 6 inch depth of the window means it protrudes out about an inch and a half. After the new siding is up, trim will make up the difference. Actually, we saw numerous examples of this when we researched it.

So there it is, new window installed. I love all the light. Immediately after this however, rain threatened, so we covered the outside with black plastic to protect it until we can finish.

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