clear, not cloudy, windows!

So for years now (we are starting our 4th year in this house), Kevin and I have been living with a huge (4 foot by 6 foot) cloudy window. It was kind of like having dirty eye glasses on ALL OF THE TIME. Plus in our inexpensive house - which years of remodeling has negated - we inherited two other windows which do not open, are old, energy inefficient and no longer contain clear glass windows, but rather milky, cloudy windows. They made our house dingy in the day time - and at night, when sun was too dim to shine, still dingy.

It took us a long time to order the windows.

1. We have never, in our lives, gone window shopping.
2. We live in Ely.
3. Online shopping for windows is not the same as physical shopping for anything.
4. Do you know how many types of windows there are?!

Eventually, we ordered them from Home Depot and had them shipped to Ely. There was no way I was going to get these babies in the Subaru and drive them up from Duluth. No way. The Subaru as never let me down (except the time my old one was leaking gas directly under the engine and almost started on fire - oh! and the time I has to replace my tranny, twice - and the other time when it suddenly stopped moving in a forward direction on a snowy winter 53 mile commute to work) and the back end is roomy, but not quite roomy enough for 4 large windows.

Old living room - in fact, this picture is from 2006. Before we had the built-in bookshelves and back when our plants looked good. Those two plants you see hanging are about 1/4 of the size... not a good indicator of my plant upkeep regime. But I digress. You can see how cloudy the windows were - I often wondered how Dolemite and Shiva could see the birds outside.

So Kevin and Troy worked their butts off yesterday - and just in time too. We are going to get 2 inches of snowy crap today and we need windows and not holes in the wall. Oh look! The snow, sleet just started and of course, since it is a weekend before deer hunting, Kevin is out in the woods checking his deer cam for activity. Now he will be a wet and cold deer cam checker.

Kevin and I got the living room ready in the wee hours of the morning - which entailed moving EVERYTHING out of the living room and hanging sheets up to keep the dust off of the books and electronic equipment. Troy brought his scaffolding over shortly thereafter and the guys worked well into the afternoon with only a break to have lunch and hit the hardware store for supplies. Before I knew it... SHIZAM! the windows were in.

As you can see there is still one more window to replace in the living room. The front window. It is either open or shut for a season. I used to be able to open it by shimming it back and forth while lifting it up at the same time. But those days are long gone. Now only Kevin can get it open and closed - once in May and once in September. I will be able to do amazing things with these new windows - I can even support my OCD and open these babies up for easy cleaning access. I am in heaven!