DIY Designer

Today, R and I tackled a small project in his house so that we could see how long such a thing would take as well as get a sense of how we are working together on something.

R wanted to enlarge his bathroom so we needed to move the window to the exterior wall and remove the interior wall which was holding the window.  Beyond the window there is a small space which we will need to cover with flooring as well.

When I got there this morning, R had already removed the window screens and the window glass so the first thing we needed to do was remove the window frame. Israeli windows have security shutters so we first removed that by unscrewing the nylon cord and rubber stoppers and pulling it out through the top.

The window has an aluminum frame which popped right off of 3 sides of the window but seemed to be jammed underneath the bathroom tiles on the left side. So we decided that we would need to remove the whole thing as one unit and then angle it out. R cut away all the insulation and sealant from around the window. When we opened it up we were amused to find all the garbage that the contractor had used as insulation. I mean literal garbage. Plastic sheeting, the foam wrapper that building supplies are covered in, even a few plastic bags. That was my first “aha” moment where I began to believe that this type of work is more about confidence than skill.

After much cutting, I lubricated the bottom of the window with WD-40 where it was jammed into the marble window ledge so it would more easily slide out. We removed it and set it aside.

All that took us around an hour and a half. We moved on to demolish the inside wall. R used his hammer-drill with a large chisel bit to get under the marble window ledge and lift it up. Then we removed the tiles by first cutting away the grout using both a tool that I’m going to call a grout cutter, but which probably has another name, and a putty knife and hammer. The grout cutter was good but the putty knife and hammer were better. It turns out it is not necessary to remove all the grout from around the tiles. All that was necessary was to cut a line with the putty knife and then chisel away at the adhesive material behind the tile using the hammer-drill. The tiles just popped right off and we set them aside for re-tiling the outside wall. Once the tiles were off, we started to remove the cinder blocks. Now, normally, I think we would have just smashed them. However, a) we didn’t have a sledge hammer (R went and got one later), and b) R wanted to save some of the blocks to use as a base for the window on the exterior wall. So we had to use the hammer-drill to cut into the cement that was holding the blocks together as well as cut into the plaster which covered the wall outside. A lot of hard work later and we got a lot of the wall down.

After that, R wanted to get moving on reinstalling the window on the outside wall because he didn’t want it to be open at night. We positioned the window frame where we wanted it and R marked holes (well, drilled marking holes) on one side. Then we drilled in, leveled everything, and screwed the window into the other side of the wall. We realized that there was too much space on the right side so we installed a piece of wood to act as an anchor for the frame. We first tried it with only 2 anchor screws but when we screwed in the window frame it pulled the wood out from the wall so we redid it with 5 or 6 screws sunk right into the concrete wall. That worked great. R had the brilliant idea to use our car jacks to hold us the frame while we were working with it. That really made me smile for some reason. After that R went out to buy some foam filler to seal around the window and to use for wall underneath and I continued to demolish the inside wall. I also used the hammer-drill chisel to clean off a few of the cinder blocks so we could use them for the external wall. That was actually kinda fun. I got very adept at handling the drill and I really enjoyed that part of the job. When R got back he brought a big sledge hammer with him and I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to smash away some of the remaining concrete with the hammer. Using the hammer-drill was way too slow and difficult.

So R used the foam to fill the areas around the window and we put cinder blocks which we will cover with tiles under the window. I had to go at that point (not to mention I could barely keep standing). All in all I think it was a good morning.

I really want to use this blog as a way of describing more than just the work we’re doing because it is also about the change that I’m making. Doing all this physical labor was difficult. I’m not gonna pretend that it wasn’t. I sit on my ass all day in front of a computer and this is the first hard work I’ve done since I put together all our Ikea furniture from our last move. Part of me really really enjoyed using my hands. But part of me is scared that I am too old to make this kind of change. I’m 34 and I’ve been working as a designer for more than 11 years. I used to exercise a lot before I got married, but I haven’t done regular exercise in many years. I’ll be honest, I’m nervous that this may be too hard for me. I came home at 1:30pm. I had been there since 9am. I was dead. I couldn’t move and I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. Now, granted, the kids got up at 6am and I didn’t go to sleep till 12 and the baby was up at around 2am so that may have contributed to my exhaustion. But this was hard work today. Demolishing the wall was the hardest part. Moving and reinstalling the window was a snap and it was fun. But the really physical part of breaking the wall and moving all the cinder blocks was hard. When we renovate our first place, I anticipate that the difficult physical parts will be painting and this type of demolition. Painting is not physically difficult but it requires a lot of manual work. I think I will enjoy tiling for some reason. The precision of it entices me. I’ll let you know.