Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Another project

A couple of years ago they refurbished the windows in the building I work. Being a "historical" building they couldn't replace them with new windows that make an effort to keep the heat on one side and the cold on the other. No, they shipped them all to Chicago where the paint was stripped, bad wood replaced, and new paint put on.
When they put the windows back in they put a wooden block in the groove to keep us from opening the windows wide enough to crawl but still wide enough so that the people standing on the lawn who actually escaped the fire can hear you curse their name as you burn to death.
I felt that these windows needed screens.

It's the green thing. No, not the tree. In front of the tree. Not the window either. It's jammed in the open window.

The screens someone bought don't expand to fill the whole thing. Bumblebees and horseflies and wasps still get through. So I went to the craft shop and got some... well, I don't know what it's called. I suppose you might use it for mounting photos on. It's more rigid than poster board but still flexible. It's thin enough to fit in the gap between the window and the window sill. A co-worker went to the hardware store to get a roll of screen.
I cut the board to fit in the window and around the handles. Then emptied out the middle and glued the screen to the back. Clear packaging tape goes around the sides to protect the edges from getting damaged by constantly being shoved in and removed from the window. It also provides a bit of waterproofing. The top still wants to bow away from the window. The planned means of attachment was discarded for reasons of material shortage. So I put more packaging tape along the top so that we could use regular tape to hold it in place without tearing up the board by constantly adding and removing tape.

Anyway, I'm happy with it. We can open our windows without the risk of bugs. Now I just need to get the raccoons out of the ceiling.

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