Everybody get in the…….

Van! The U-Haul cargo van that is. That’s right, as briefly mentioned in this past week’s blog, we got us a van and went for a road trip to Tennessee last Saturday to acquire the remaining 6 windows we needed to finish off that portion of the Pulp Porch (which of course allows us to proceed to the next portion). I’ve been talking about this for the last two weeks on the New Pulp page and under this week’s Pulp Improvements but just so you know, we had picked a certain style and size Pella window for the porch project and I started buying them at the Local Lowe’s (which is apparently of the few places you can actually get Pella windows off the shelf). As I had to lay them down in Chuck the Truck’s back bed, (which is not recommended for windows) I was only buying one or at most two per trip and pretty much installing as needed. I did realize that the local Lowe’s only had a certain number of them but was hoping they had some back stock and figured the other slightly further away Lowe’s would be bound to have the rest as they often seem better stocked than the closer one. So I continued along, bought all of the ones they had nearby and then shot over to the other Lowe’s. Turns out they didn’t even stock this style (ouch) and upon further research, would be unable to replenish the ones I needed until October 24th! Mind you, it still being August, this was not exactly what I wanted to hear. Thus began the search and subsequent finding of the ones I needed, a mere two plus hours away. Well worth it when you think about having to put a project on hold for two months! Anyway, all is well and below is what I wrote up for this week’s Pulp Improvement pic of the week (which is me with a mallet and standing in front of the last of the windows after installing them yesterday). Peace and see you all next week!

“Sometimes you just need to teach those windows a lesson! Just kidding, more of teaching the framing a lesson or “how to properly fit in” I suppose. You may have guessed it, our road trip to the town of Hendersonville, Tennessee Lowe’s was a complete success and the 6 remaining windows we required were there as promised (quick side note, as we were loading them into the U-Haul cargo van we had rented, one of the 6 windows was a different style and had slats across it, thankfully we noticed and they actually had the correct style still in stock so just a quick switch and we were good, REMINDER, always check to make sure you got the right stuff, especially on big purchases from far away, such as this was). So, backing up, I did indeed try to make the frames as tight as possible, as you normally would, but remember we were doing each window one at a time so these were really frames within frames which gets a little dicey when dealing with imperfect wood boards….thus the mallet! In short, these were the last two windows, none were damaged or cracked during the install process, yours truly didn’t fall off of the porch while working this end (I did almost always have some sort of restraining device across the opening as the porch floor is about 10 feet up from driveway) and just need to finish up top of frame on this end, adjust one window’s height and just like that, think we’ll get going on the tile flooring. Check out the progress pics below!”