Home Improvement Update - 21 August 2011

The first egress window was cut out this weekend.  It was a pain.  I now know why most people will never do more than one.  I cut both sides with a gas powered cut off saw, but the cement was too thick for the saw.  I also wasn't perfectly straight in my cut, so the cuts from the inside and outside didn't line up.  I had to rent a hammer drill and drill out the entire perimeter in order to get the block of cement out.  It still didn't come out, so we hooked up a come-along to my truck and tried yanking it out.  That didn't work, so we beat it with a sledge hammer for 20 minutes before it finally broke loose.  I finished off the last little bit by yanking it with the truck.  

Once the block was out, I drilled a bunch of holes in it while it was on the ground and busted it up with a sledge hammer into small pieces.  Finally, I framed in the hole an put up a temporary board.  The window should be ready by this coming weekend.  Start to finish, it only took 14 hours to get this done.  I am very grateful Dalton came down to help with this project.  Without his help, I would probably still be working on it.

If we don't pay someone to cut out the other window, I will probably just use a hammer drill.  It produced way less mess (no gas fumes or water), was faster, and went all the way through the block.  It also works well to get the block into manageable pieces.  Plus, it costs less than half of what the saw ran me.

This is for comparison.  This window used to be the same size as the one on the right in this photo.