emmuzka

So, did you know that windows (at least in Finland) can just be a sort of... flat panel that's friction fitted into the frame, with nothing holding them in place at all?

Well! I didn't!

i. The Prelude.

Most of the windows in our house are casements that open like little doors with hinges on one side (or rather, most of them have one casement next to a big pane that doesn't open). Upstairs in our house, the attic level, there are big wide windows positioned centrally under the peak of the roof on both the east and west faces of the house (the gable ends), and then on each side of each of these, under the eaves, there are sort of miniature single-pane windows as well. Of these four little mini windows, the SE and SW ones are in the unconditioned attic space; the NE one is next to the head of the bed, and the NW one is in the library (Wax's WFH office). The mini window at the head of the bed is opened and closed frequently, for ventilation and rain and cold; as the house is from 1950, the windows are all double glazed, but the inner window opens inward on its hinges and then the outer one opens outward on its separate hinges. In the summer, we remove the inner windows for all the windows which we frequently keep open (lift them off their hinges) for easier opening and closing of the outer ones. And the mini window by the head of the bed has a slightly different hardware for holding it open and closed than the big ones; it only needs one latch for holding it closed and one latch for holding it open.


ii. Act One.

When Wax's aunt was coming to visit this summer, and Wax was at work, and I was furiously and industriously cleaning the house before the beloved aunt's visit, I got the idea to open the mini window in the library, which is at the foot of the guest bed, for ventilation. I was convinced that it had been opened many times (this wasn't true), so I just pried at it until the inner window came off - not off of hinges like the NE window, just popped out of the opening. "Wow, another example of very sloppy and careless housebuilding!" I thought.

But with the inner window off, I could see that the outer window had the one little latch at the right that the bedroom mini window has, so I pushed on it. It was stuck tight, but I thought it was just stuck, and hit the edge of the frame carefully with a hammer over a folded towel until it opened a crack. Only then it didn't open any more, and I could see that the reason it was sticking was that somebody, at some point, had STAPLED a bunch of thin plastic over the outer edge of the window, the face that was wedged into the window frame. So that's when I realized that this window had NOT in fact been opened since we moved there, and decided to close it again. I pulled on the latch to close it as violently as I am able, and it didn't close all the way, but it did close enough so there was only a thin crack left. And it was the middle of summer, so that wasn't an issue at that time.


iii. Act Two.

Yesterday Wax finally got switched back from only working in the office to 50% WFH again (yay!), starting immediately. Today. She plugged in her computer late last night and started working early this morning without taking full stock of the window situation (stuck open a crack) or the temperature situation (about 15°). So it wasn't until she finished work for the evening that we could tackle the window.

Wax edged between the bookshelves and the seaman's chest, leaning forward and around the massive hoya carnosa which stands at the window on a wooden plant stand in a very heavy ceramic pot with its tendrils twisted around the bookshelf, the hanging light, and the curtain rod on the big window. She did not have firmly planted feet, she did not have a good center of balance, and she could not clearly see what she was doing, is my point. She started trying to just tug the window closed. That didn't really work. She noticed the stapled on plastic I had told her about. Then I guess she... pushed instead of pulling? And just threw the window... out the window.

There was a popping noise and then a tinkle of breaking glass. "It didn't have any hinges!" she said. "We're too stupid to own a house," we mourned. We stuck the inner window back in place (or rather, just sort of set it in place, since there's nothing to hold it there since it has no hardware attached to it at all, it's just a rectangle of glass in a wooden frame) to keep the rain out and went downstairs.

As soon as we walked out the door, it started raining on us, and when we got to the bed of flowers under the window, we found that the window had somehow landed on a vent pipe coming out of the side of the addition and stuck on it, well above my head, so I could not possibly lift it off, but the ground slopes down so it's not going to be easy to even get a ladder there. It also broke a chunk of asbestos shingle off the addition while it was at it! (So in that sense I guess it's good that it was raining???) We picked up the loose glass from the ground and got ready to trudge sadly back inside when I looked up and saw Tristana's tiny face sticking out of the hole in the wall. Then she stuck her whole head and shoulders out, and given that she's tiny and fearless, clumsy, and not very smart, I panicked with the fear that she would fall out of the window. Apparently the inner window had just fallen back out as soon as we left. (It was caught between the wall and the plant pot and unharmed.) We taped it up with blue painter's tape for the time being. (Tristana didn't fall out the window. She came when I called - from inside - and then, due to being excited about us moving furniture and windows around, started yowling and zooming around the house.)


iv. Act Three.

I guess that will be whatever happens when we try to retrieve the window frame, reglaze it, and cover the hole in the wall with whatever kind of weatherproofing we can manage, since Wax has to work 50% of this winter just out of arm's reach of the tiny NW window. I didn't want to end the post after two acts, though, because that just seems like bad dramatic structure.