How To Cover An Unwanted Window

Yous guys! Since I've been soooo busy with the move and getting our house on the market, my good friend Melony fromSledgehammer Queenoffered to write a invitee post on a fabulous fox she used in i of her recent flips! You are gonna Honey this remodeling hack. And be certain to check out her weblog for more details on her awesome house renovations.

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Hi, I'chiliad Melony from SledgehammerQueen! I want to thank Christy for assuasive me to guest mail service on The Harper House! I love reading about the flips that she and her husband do. I'm currently on the prowl for shiplap then I can recreate some of the projects Christy does!!

My husband and I also flip houses in the little town of Hooversville, PA. Our town was a mining town, and like lots of picayune communities beyond America, the world has moved on to bigger and better. People tend to look downward on communities such every bit this, but I've lived here for 34 years and I have to say, information technology's a great place to live.

We accept the beauty of the Allegheny Mountains all around u.s., and for a customs of 700, we have a hardware store, two grocery/sundry stores, a post office, a bank and an eating establishment!! Our goal is to encourage others in surrounding communities to run across the beauty in this boondocks and to want to alive in such a wonderful community.

Today, I want to share with yous our solution to one of those nagging issues- how to eliminate a window in a brick house and make information technology look great on the outside of the abode; and then here's our have on this dilemma:

When renovating houses, sometimes it becomes necessary to eliminate windows to reconfigure the layout of rooms. I notice this most ofttimes happens with kitchens. My married man and I tend to work on sometime houses, so often, in the kitchen, there are doors to the basement, doors to the the dining room, doors to the hall and maybe even the back door! Then in that location are 5 foot tall windows and erstwhile fashioned hot h2o radiators to work effectually. This leaves about 3 feet of usable wall space to hang cabinets on (I exaggerate a bit, just not much).

We also tend to knock down a lot of walls to create open floor plans, but and so y'all have even less wall infinite to piece of work with to configure the cabinet arrangement. The good news is, since the walls are down, at present the light from other rooms' windows tend to light up the kitchen, then y'all can eliminate a window and there is still plenty of sunlight streaming in.

Now, hither'due south the dilemma- what practice you do when the house is brick? I'chiliad okay with taking windows out when I know I will exist re-siding and no one will ever know a window used to be there. What are your options with brick? Put a slice of woods in the opening and paint information technology to friction match the brick? I have always felt that it wasn't an option to remove a window in brick because I only don't like this look. Then, inspiration struck!

In our H2o Street House there just wasn't a logical place to put the kitchen cabinets unless we removed this window.

Now, we really eliminated this window a couple of years agone. It was located in the corner of the room beside where the tall white chiffonier now resides.

Since we can't go dorsum and show you exactly how we did this, my awesome husband, Neb helped me practise a mock-upward of the procedure. We did the mock-up in an old business firm (the Riverhouse) that we oasis't renovated yet, so hold on to your hats, the following pictures are a little scary!! Hither'southward an overview of the kitchen (beautiful isn't it?).

Here is the window we "eliminated" in our demo.

I chose this window to do this demo on because information technology was one of the only ones in Riverhouse that still had a mini blind in it. The mini blind is an important part of this procedure, so even though it'southward dirty and gross, at least I didn't have to buy i 🙂

We re-installed the mini blind brackets to the surface of the window and then that we would accept the maximum corporeality of room left subsequently the adjacent step, which is to install particleboard over the mini blind. When nosotros did this technique at Water Street, nosotros painted the exterior of the particleboard blackness (You will run across this downwardly below). For this demo, we but installed the particleboard unpainted.

For those of you not super familiar with circular saws, we thought we'd also show y'all how to suit the round saw for the right depth to cutting through the plywood. In the above photo, you can see how far the blade is below the guide. This would exist the proper depth to cut a thicker piece of wood.

Adjusting the bract is accomplished by releasing the lever at the back of the saw, and then moving the blade up or down depending on what you are doing. We wanted to cut through the plywood without cutting through the sawbucks, so yous can encounter, the depth of the saw needs to exist very shallow as our particle board is just 7/16″ thick.

After we got the right depth (in a higher place), we then measured the opening of the window and so marked and cut the particleboard to fit. Disclosure – the window opening was REALLY crooked, so it took the states 4 adjustments to get the particleboard to fit. Hopefully your house is much straighter than this sometime beauty.

We then attached the particleboard to the stops at the side of the window with screws. At Water Street, Bill also caulked around the edge of the particleboard to keep grit and bugs out of the business firm.

Here's an overview of the window covered with the particleboard. Please ignore the white paneling! (How-do-you-do 1970's). This house has this great bump-out on both sides of the house. Obviously, I would never cover upwardly a window in such a absurd feature, but again I picked this window because it had the blind 😐

We then installed insulation over the particleboard. At the Water Street business firm, the walls are 15″ thick and then it was really easy to install a nice thick layer of insulation. At this house (and at most houses) the walls are a standard thickness, so I removed one-half of the thickness of the insulation and then installed information technology.

Hither is a close-upwardly of the drywall and so installed over the installation. We used a spare piece of drywall to just give you an idea of how the window opening would disappear and yous would accept a new blank surface to work on. You tin can meet a glimpse of the insulation (and of course the particleboard) nether the border of the drywall.

Here's what this window looks like from outside at present. It looks similar you have the blinds closed, but read on because at the Water Street house, it looks even more than realistic.

At the Water Street holding, beginning nosotros installed a make new window so it would match the other windows nosotros replaced, and deliberately left it unlocked. We then installed a make new mini blind. Leaving the window unlocked allows for hereafter maintenance, such every bit keeping the within of the window opening clean or replacing the mini blind.

I'm sure we volition accept to be contortionists to address these bug, but worst instance scenario, we tin can simply remove the window panes, fix what needs fixing and then reinstall them. I know eventually the mini bullheaded will endure from dry rot, but the good news in this instance is that the window doesn't become much directly sunlight considering it is shaded by the garage adjacent door. Then, if you're reading between the lines, this window had the worst view of any in the house. The other windows have squeamish views of the yard and the Stonycreek River which runs along the back one thousand, so it would take been a much harder conclusion to decide to remove one of those windows.

To finish the kitchen walls, on the inside we cut a canvas of particleboard to fit the opening and painted it black on 1 side. From the exterior, doesn't it merely look like the window is open up? Yous are looking right at the particleboard.

Just like in the mock-upward, we then insulated the opening that was left on the interior side. Over all of this, nosotros drywalled, painted and finished the kitchen.

Right where the refrigerator volition go, the window is still there, you lot only can't run across it!

On the outside we have what looks like a perfectly normal window, with the blinds open (and no lights turned on). On the inside we accept a complete kitchen with room for a refrigerator. Do y'all accept a situation like this at your house? Will this assist you lot to solve the problem? Permit me know!

If you would like my Free Printable on "How to Buy a House, and not a Lemon", you can find it here. I hope you enjoyed this mail and again I would like to thank Christy from the bottom of my heart for allowing me to share this post with you, her crawly readers!

Thanks!

Melony @ sledgehammerqueen.com

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Source: https://www.theharperhouse.com/remodeling-hack/

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