My Day As An Apprentice

John did a lot of work on Justin's house after we bought it - refinishing wood floors, painting, insulating, putting in a new kitchen floor, replacing some of the boards on the back deck, and many other things that needed to be fixed. I helped some, but mostly with small things, especially after I got asked not to paint because nobody wanted to see my brush marks and my taping was sub-par. (Fine with me!)

Justin has a big bow window in the living room. Since the house was built around 1960, it only has single-pane glass, which has always bothered John. We couldn't afford to replace the whole window, so John had this idea to make storm windows for it. He bought clear plexiglass sheets, used the router to trim each panel to the correct size for the window pane, and made, cut, and painted channeled wood blocks to hold the plexiglass sheets onto the outside of the window. I wasn't so sure how this whole thing would look, but yesterday was installation day. 

The pillow is for Justin's cat, Nugget. I was disappointed
that she didn't lie on her pillow and watch us.

I was in charge of removing the blue plastic wrapping from each piece of plexiglass, ensuring it was clean and free of dust and dirt, and handing John the correct pieces and associated wooden blocks while he used the drill to screw the blocks in and anchor each piece of plexiglass. The static electricity on the plexiglass attracted a lot of dust, but it was a chilly day and I was wearing gloves which helped. 

When John attached the first blocks I thought he placed them sort of haphazardly and it took me a few minutes to convince him to move them more to the periphery and in line with the existing window divisions. He did eventually see that I was right but that meant we had to move six or eight blocks, fill in the screw holes and paint over them.

We used gold-colored screws so while John was cleaning up, I painted the screw heads with white paint so they wouldn't stick out so much. We were working outside, and it was chilly and took over five hours, but I tried not to complain. John had already done most of the painstaking work so I got to be the gofer and apprentice. I'm still not convinced this will make a measurable difference and I wonder if it was really worth all the time and expense (plexiglass isn't cheap!) but it looks better than I thought it would. 

Today I'm staying home and looking forward to my usual chores of cooking, mopping the kitchen floor, and cleaning the bathroom. They're easier than my day as a storm window installation apprentice!