Still more on windows

Are you sick of hearing about windows yet? Because I am. But in the scheme of all the things that we could have to fix around the house, windows might be one of the cheaper and less extreme ones. You may remember that as we wait for our new vinyl ones to be ready to installed upstairs, we had a little incident in our basement. Actually, two incidents, resulting in two broken windows. I wanted them fixed quickly so that the litter boxes could again be hidden out of sight in the unfinished part of the basement (they were temporarily in our finished area of the basement, in plain sight of my elliptical machine, which is not a very inspiring view when exercising) and for security.

First we had to decide how we wanted them fixed. My parents suggested glass block windows, which provide extra security, insulation, leak prevention:

Try as we might, nobody seemed to want to install them for a reasonable price. Some people didn't "do" installations at all, only offering to sell us the supplies at much more than we could find at Home Depot. Others would do both, for at least $500/window (which is about what we're paying for our nice new triple-paned argon-filled fancy shmancy ones upstairs that actually have complicated parts), and others (general contractors) would do the installation if we provided the windows and paid them about $300-400/window.

No thanks.

Next we looked into getting some glass cut. Actually pretty easy to have done at Lowes. We measured the window from the outside and brought the measurements there. For $5/pane, we could get glass. For about $35 for a whole sheet (enough for us to cut two panes ourselves), we could get acrylic. It was then we realized an issue we hadn't considered when we thought about buying glass block: fire escapes. Glass block is impossible to break through. So is acrylic. Now, we do have a walk-up door in our basement, but suddenly I wasn't sure I wanted the "extra security" of not being able to break the windows. People can't get in, but they also can't get out. And besides, that's what home insurance is for, right.

So we went with plain old glass and then had to content with the actual installation. It was a multi-step process, which D pretty much took care of all by himself (someone had to take the pictures...).

1. Chisel out all the old glass and glazing.

This was much harder than we thought, since the glazing was pretty much solid as a rock and applied copiously. Here's a close-up of what had to be removed so that the new pane could sit correctly in the frame:

Removing all that crud was what took most of the installation time. I used a little heat gun to assist but mostly it just took a few hours of chiseling. The finished result wasn't perfect but it was clean enough for the new pane to go in. We also had to be careful since the second pane in each broken window was still in tact, so we didn't want to hammer so hard that we broke that one too.

2. Apply glazing to the empty frame:

3. Carefully set the pane in the frame:

4. Apply more glazing to the other side of the pane. This took a lot more glazing than we thought and we ran out of one tube after just one window (we thought we could use one tube for both the windows).

5. Smooth the glazing with a putty knife and wipe up excess (like that stuff coming out of the caulk gun which fell onto the clean glass just after I took this picture):

6. Let dry, put back into window, and admire. (This picture really emphasizes the difference between new and old glazing--see how white the new one is and how dingy the old one is?)

In all, it cost about $40 (glazing was about $8/tube and we needed to buy the chisel) and maybe 4 hours of (mostly D's) time. It took almost as much time to call contractors for estimates. I think it was definitely worth doing ourselves and not paying for a contractor. Even if they could have removed the glazing faster, I'm sure it would have taken at least an hour or two at some exorbitant labor cost, plus materials. I will give D credit--he broke both windows but at least took care of them quickly and, it seems, correctly. Hopefully the panes don't come crashing out in a couple of days.

edited to add: D thought of the brilliant idea of adding bars to our two back windows, so that we get the security without having the heavy-duty windows. They are only about $25 from Home Depot and we can install them ourselves, plus they can open from the insides, so we are not compromising fire safety. Looks like that will be an upcoming improvement.