Wednesday, December 31, 2014

The Addition Window Plan

The new apartment addition shell size and shape is set.  Before the walls could go up, we needed to decide on the windows.  We have a collection of windows that we found in various bargain situations; mostly Habitat ReStores.  They were originally intended for our first plan of a small cabin to live in while we built the dream house.  Of course, that plan has been long replaced by new plans.  But the windows remain.  While they are all similar, they are just different enough in style, color, or size that we really can't use them all together.

I've thought about the window placement since the beginning, but have had trouble pulling a plan together.  The West wall (kitchen wall) will have the window from the existing apartment wall recycled into the space over the sink.  So that one was easy.  But the other walls weren't.  The nicest views are to the East and South.  The East wall (more accurately, SE) looks over the nice fern and hosta garden toward the drive down to the house site (Moss Hollow Lane).  The diagonal wall faces the woods and foot trail down to the house site.  The South wall (really SW) looks toward the grassed clearing area, then woods.  All, more or less, look over Moss Hollow through the trees.  In the winter, when the leaves are gone, you can see the ridge lines across Moss Hollow and Indian Creek valley.  I knew we needed lots of glass facing these directions, but exactly how to do it and keep it affordable and looking OK, took some hard thinking.

Just looking at the blank space didn't quite work.  I needed to visualize the wall planes.  So I drew scale drawings of them and placed windows on them. Included were the kitchen cabinets, island and the big stained glass panel that we plan to hang in the gable end of the room.  I made scale cut-outs of the windows we had in inventory and tried them.  The only one that I felt worked, was a big 3 window unit that will work in the South wall. The others in our inventory were all singles and we really needed sets to take advantage of our views.

 
 
The other two walls called for groups of windows: as much glass as possible.  The drawings gave me a good idea of the general sizes of windows we needed for the space. 
 
 
 I checked Craig's list, and there was a nice group of 3 that would fit the East wall perfect.  The price was $115 each.  They were new vinyl and with interior grills.  Seemed a little high for Craig's list, so I checked Menards for comparison.  As it turned out, Menards had a similar window (no grill, which better matched my other windows) on clearance for $89.  I went for the ones at Menards.  That way I knew I could match the brand and style for the remaining windows in the SE (diagonal) wall (even if I had to pay full price).


OK, so now I have a plan.  I can start putting up walls as soon as I have the time and the weather doesn't scare me off.



 



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