New Windows for The Wren's Nest

Hello there!

Well, we are finally putting new windows in this little old mobile home. We opted for ones with grids. They were only slightly more expensive but we thought they were well worth the money as they gave this place more of a "cottage" look. We have ordered them six at a time, because the folks at the nice mobile home place that we go to give us 10% off if we do.

When this place was built 40 years ago, it had the old-type aluminum awning windows, which you cranked open. The good part was that you could leave them opened when it rained, and usually no rain would come in. The bad part was that aluminum pits after time and gets nasty looking. Also, the windows  have so many working parts that some of them become dysfunctional. These are no longer air tight, so water came in and rotted the window sills in areas...

You have to manually swap out the screens and storm windows each spring and fall. And these are fastened on inside with little clips held on with screws, which doesn't make for nice looking window trim.

After all the windows are in, we will be re-framing the insides and installing new trim, which will be painted by moi...

The cranks used to open them is inserted through a hole in the trim, again, not air tight and ugly to look at...

Though installing the windows is not hard in itself, the prep work is time consuming. First, all of the old aluminum awnings had to come down. As with much else in this place, the screws holding them up were old and rusted, some were broken, and a pain it the butt to remove...

Here is the bank of old rear windows in the master bedroom, replete with red tail lights above. Gee, how can you tell that this is a mobile home? You can see how the windows are flanged and screwed onto the structure, a look which we are not fond of, to say the least...

In this picture, actually taken of the old living room windows, Bob is removing the old caulking from under the flanges. New caulking was then put on all of the new ones...

Here we are back at the bedroom windows when one new one was in. What a difference!...

And here all three are in, with the lovely grey wood trim that you previously saw me painting. The trim covers up the screws in the flanges, and looks so much nicer...

Whittling away at this task has kept us rather busy, but it's well worth the extra effort. We've been getting a lot of compliments on the look. At this writing, we've replaced 13 widows, with five more to go. Hip hip hooray!