Decisions on Sashes

Well, I made up my mind – for now anyway – that the new window with the stained glass sash is going to be centered horizontally on the wall, but it will be lifted slightly higher than the other sash. Here’s the picture again for reference.



The window on the left is 42-inches off the floor on the interior side. Once it’s trimmed out that will be more like 38-inches, which would put it just above the 36-inch wainscoting that I had originally planned for the little mud room.

If I move the new window up one row of siding that will lift it another 7 or 8 inches. If I do 36-inch subway tile in the bathroom that will leave me plenty of room in between the base of the window and the top of the tile to mount a towel bar if I want to.

Before I start the window installation I need to make sure I have all the siding ready to go. Today was clear blue skies with brutally cold temperatures (It dropped down to 33 last night! Brrr!), but that could change in a moments notice. Unless I want to resort to plastic sheeting, I need to have all my ducks in a row before I pull nail-one.

So it was out to the wood shed today to see what I had in the way of siding. There is still some out there, but I am really down to the dregs of the siding selection. There is also the issue of having 2 kinds of siding, that while they may look identical, do in fact have slightly different profiles. I’m going to have to be very careful with the selection process.

I figured I need a total of 6 – 11.5 foot pieces, and 10 – 5 foot pieces to finish out the side once the new window is in place. I was able to scrounge from the shed 3 – 11.5 foot pieces, and 10 - 5 foot pieces. That’s not bad, but those numbers will almost assuredly drop over the next few days as I begin prep them. And they need a lot of prep. As I said, this is pretty much the bottom of the barrel for lengths of this size. They all need to be trimmed to length, puttied, and sanded. I also want to prime and paint them before they are installed. I haven’t even thought about where I’m going to put all of this stuff while I’m painting it.

Anyway, if I can use all that I scrounged from the shed, that means I only need 3 more 11.5 footers. We’ll say 36 more feet. I called down to Almquist lumber yesterday to see what the price was on the siding I saw there a week a go. You know you’re dealing with a real lumber yard when they give you the price in Board Feet and not Lineal Feet. The siding is $4.92 a board foot, which somehow equates to $3.28 a lineal foot. I’ve had the conversion explained to me a few times, but it’s something I use so little I forget it almost as soon as I’m told it.

So that works out to be $126.64 for the 36 feet I need. If I had to buy all of it then it would come to $418.62. Needless to say, that’s a big difference, and it’s an incentive to use as much of my salvage stuff as possible, regardless of what it takes to make it look good. I figure it’s going to take me the rest of the week and part of the weekend to get it all prepped. I’ll then need to buy the new stuff and prime and paint it. Maybe a week from this Saturday I can reframe the wall and put in the new window.