How To Enclose A Window

Y'all guys! Since I've been soooo busy with the move and getting our house on the market, my expert friend Melony fromSledgehammer Queenoffered to write a guest post on a fabulous pull a fast one on she used in one of her recent flips! You lot are gonna Dearest this remodeling hack. And be sure to check out her blog for more details on her awesome firm renovations.

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Hi, I'm Melony from SledgehammerQueen! I want to thank Christy for allowing me to invitee post on The Harper Business firm! I love reading about the flips that she and her hubby do. I'1000 currently on the prowl for shiplap so I can recreate some of the projects Christy does!!

My husband and I also flip houses in the little boondocks of Hooversville, PA. Our town was a mining town, and similar lots of petty communities across America, the world has moved on to bigger and ameliorate. People tend to wait downwards on communities such every bit this, only I've lived hither for 34 years and I accept to say, it'southward a corking place to live.

We take the beauty of the Allegheny Mountains all effectually us, and for a customs of 700, we have a hardware store, two grocery/sundry stores, a postal service office, a depository financial institution and an eating establishment!! Our goal is to encourage others in surrounding communities to come across the beauty in this town and to want to live in such a wonderful community.

Today, I desire to share with you our solution to one of those nagging problems- how to eliminate a window in a brick house and make it look great on the outside of the home; so here's our take on this dilemma:

When renovating houses, sometimes it becomes necessary to eliminate windows to reconfigure the layout of rooms. I detect this virtually often happens with kitchens. My hubby and I tend to work on erstwhile houses, so oft, in the kitchen, there are doors to the basement, doors to the the dining room, doors to the hall and maybe even the dorsum door! Then in that location are 5 foot tall windows and old fashioned hot water radiators to work effectually. This leaves about 3 feet of usable wall space to hang cabinets on (I exaggerate a bit, but non much).

We also tend to knock downwards a lot of walls to create open up floor plans, only so you have fifty-fifty less wall space to piece of work with to configure the cabinet arrangement. The good news is, since the walls are down, at present the light from other rooms' windows tend to light upwardly the kitchen, so yous can eliminate a window and in that location is still plenty of sunlight streaming in.

At present, hither's the dilemma- what do you do when the house is brick? I'grand okay with taking windows out when I know I will be re-siding and no one volition ever know a window used to be there. What are your options with brick? Put a piece of wood in the opening and pigment it to match the brick? I take always felt that information technology wasn't an option to remove a window in brick because I just don't similar this look. Then, inspiration struck!

In our Water Street House there just wasn't a logical place to put the kitchen cabinets unless nosotros removed this window.

Now, we really eliminated this window a couple of years ago. Information technology was located in the corner of the room abreast where the tall white cabinet now resides.

Since nosotros can't go back and evidence you exactly how we did this, my awesome hubby, Bill helped me do a mock-up of the procedure. We did the mock-up in an old firm (the Riverhouse) that we haven't renovated withal, and so hold on to your hats, the following pictures are a petty scary!! Hither's an overview of the kitchen (cute isn't it?).

Hither is the window nosotros "eliminated" in our demo.

I chose this window to practice this demo on because it was one of the simply ones in Riverhouse that still had a mini blind in it. The mini bullheaded is an of import part of this procedure, and so fifty-fifty though it'due south dirty and gross, at to the lowest degree I didn't have to buy one 🙂

Nosotros re-installed the mini blind brackets to the surface of the window and then that we would have the maximum amount of room left after the adjacent step, which is to install particleboard over the mini blind. When we did this technique at Water Street, nosotros painted the outside of the particleboard black (Y'all will see this down beneath). For this demo, nosotros just installed the particleboard unpainted.

For those of you not super familiar with circular saws, we idea we'd also show y'all how to adjust the round saw for the correct depth to cut through the plywood. In the to a higher place photograph, you can see how far the blade is below the guide. This would be the proper depth to cut a thicker slice of woods.

Adjusting the bract is accomplished by releasing the lever at the back of the saw, and so moving the blade up or downward depending on what you are doing. We wanted to cut through the plywood without cutting through the sawbucks, and so you can see, the depth of the saw needs to be very shallow as our particle board is only 7/16″ thick.

After we got the correct depth (to a higher place), nosotros then measured the opening of the window and and then marked and cut the particleboard to fit. Disclosure – the window opening was REALLY crooked, so it took us 4 adjustments to become the particleboard to fit. Hopefully your house is much straighter than this old beauty.

Nosotros then attached the particleboard to the stops at the side of the window with screws. At H2o Street, Bill also caulked around the edge of the particleboard to proceed dust and bugs out of the firm.

Here'south an overview of the window covered with the particleboard. Please ignore the white paneling! (Howdy 1970'south). This house has this great bump-out on both sides of the firm. Evidently, I would never cover up a window in such a cool feature, only again I picked this window considering it had the blind 😐

We then installed insulation over the particleboard. At the H2o Street house, the walls are 15″ thick so it was really easy to install a overnice thick layer of insulation. At this house (and at most houses) the walls are a standard thickness, so I removed half of the thickness of the insulation and and so installed it.

Hither is a close-upwards of the drywall then installed over the installation. Nosotros used a spare piece of drywall to merely requite y'all an thought of how the window opening would disappear and y'all would have a new blank surface to work on. Yous can see a glimpse of the insulation (and of grade the particleboard) nether the edge of the drywall.

Here's what this window looks like from outside now. It looks like you have the blinds closed, but read on because at the H2o Street house, it looks fifty-fifty more realistic.

At the Water Street property, first we installed a make new window so information technology would friction match the other windows nosotros replaced, and deliberately left it unlocked. Nosotros then installed a brand new mini blind. Leaving the window unlocked allows for hereafter maintenance, such every bit keeping the within of the window opening make clean or replacing the mini blind.

I'm certain we will accept to be contortionists to accost these problems, but worst instance scenario, we can simply remove the window panes, fix what needs fixing then reinstall them. I know eventually the mini blind will suffer from dry rot, but the skilful news in this case is that the window doesn't get much direct sunlight considering it is shaded past the garage side by side door. So, if yous're reading between the lines, this window had the worst view of any in the house. The other windows have dainty views of the thou and the Stonycreek River which runs along the back grand, so information technology would have been a much harder decision to decide to remove one of those windows.

To terminate the kitchen walls, on the inside we cut a sheet of particleboard to fit the opening and painted information technology black on one side. From the outside, doesn't it just expect like the window is open? Y'all are looking right at the particleboard.

But like in the mock-up, we then insulated the opening that was left on the interior side. Over all of this, we drywalled, painted and finished the kitchen.

Correct where the refrigerator will get, the window is still there, yous just tin't see it!

On the outside we have what looks similar a perfectly normal window, with the blinds open (and no lights turned on). On the inside we have a complete kitchen with room for a fridge. Do you have a situation similar this at your business firm? Will this help you to solve the problem? Let me know!

If you would like my Costless Printable on "How to Buy a House, and not a Lemon", you tin can notice it hither. I hope you enjoyed this mail service and again I would like to thank Christy from the bottom of my eye for allowing me to share this post with you, her awesome readers!

Thanks!

Melony @ sledgehammerqueen.com

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Source: https://www.theharperhouse.com/remodeling-hack/

Posted by: overlyalifeen.blogspot.com

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