Making Room for new Sliding Glass Doors

We knew when we bought the Comet Circle house that we would have to replace the 4 picture windows in the living room.  Everyone who looked at the wall couldn't believe that they were actually windows instead of sliding glass doors.  Two of the windows were just about to fall out so removing them was a very good thing.  No longer would I have to worry about them falling out on someone or about them breaking all over the yard.

First the frame is taken off

Teamwork

Then the bottom frame is pried off

And finally the glass comes out.  Simple since it was falling out anyway

 Once the windows on the right were out, it was on to those on the left. We expected them to be a little tougher since the glass was securely in it's frame. Lots of prying and pounding was needed so its no surprise that Tim hit the glass on the far left window.

A little broken glass didn't slow Mark and Tim down

We learned that the glass was tempered.  Have you ever seen a tempered glass window break? It gets millions of little cracks it in until it eventually breaks apart and you get....... a pile of "diamonds" 

We thought we could catch the glass in the garbage can.... not so much.  But the shop vac sucked it right up

While Tim and I cleaned up the glass, Mark continued to work on getting the window in the other frame out.  He worked on the inside, prying a bit, then the outside prying more. Then he hammered here and there until.... yep he broke a pane of glass too.  Guess he didn't want to let Tim have all the fun.  But Mark broke the pane on the OUTSIDE so all the little bits fell on the ground under where the new deck will be.  If you get to choose which pane to break, I vote for the inside one.  It's much easier to vacuum the pieces off of a wood floor than to dig it out of dirt.  OK so I missed a piece or two thousand.  Now you all have to wear shoes when you come visit.  While I was picking glass out of the dirt, Mark and Tim eventually got both of the windows and the frames removed and thrown into the dumpster.  

Now that all the weight from the windows was gone, we could move on to repairing the rotten floor and jacking up the center post to get rid of the cracks in the wall and make everything level.  The center of the window was 1/2" lower than the sides of the wall.  Our plan was to jack up the center post and put the new subfloor (which is 1/2") under the post along with the piece of 2x4 that was already there so that it would be level.  

First the nasty, rotten part of the floor was cut out.

Is this what they mean on HGTV "Love It or List It" when they say "open concept floor plan"?

Can you envision sliding glass doors here?

Then we worked outside to rig up the jack and boost up the post.  

Mark attached a giant board to the post that was already on the house.  This new post extended down to a jack on the ground (that little red thing at the bottom of the picture).  I was up in the Living Room while Tim and Mark were down by the jack.  They said "When we jack this up, put the sub-floor board under the post, put this little piece of wood in place and then we'll lower it."  Sounds so simple.  They started jacking it up and the post started moving into the back yard.  Really, it was moving out of the house.  It freaked me out so I yelled and they stopped.  I didn't want to be up in the Living Room so we changed spots.  Tim went up into the living room while Mark and I were down at the jack.  My new job was to raise the jack while Mark pushed the post in to keep it in place and Tim did all the hard work with the sub-floor board.  It worked like a charm.  We got everything into place and nicely leveled. 

Everything's in place. 

We are one step closer to siding the house.  Now we are waiting for our new windows and doors to be delivered.  But to make the window and door installation easier, we are going to build the deck in the back.  That will be our Labor Day Weekend project.