Today was Monday, and I had such a hard time getting going. I had a good weekend but as the pandemic wears on, I’m wearing a bit thin. Probably the highlight of the weekend was going to the lovely Marina with my son on Sunday morning to play at the playground and check out the shoreline on such a warm and beautiful day, and having the contractor for our new windows come over on Saturday and confirm measurements, because our PERMIT got approved.
I really struggled to get these permits first formatted, then properly submitted and accepted to be approved/reviewed at all. For a few weeks I was stressed about it, knowing it wasn’t getting crossed off my to-do list, and just feeling down about being a procrastinator. Finally my husband stepped in because he thought the windows had been ordered weeks ago (they had not!), and I provided him with all of the information I thought we needed or I had already filled out. He was able to format the PDF files to the correct dimensions (helps to have a licensed version of the software!) and used an app on his phone to take a very detailed looking photo turned sketch/rendering of the window to show the ‘before’, while our contractor provided the ‘after’. Don’t even go there about why our contractor didn’t do the permitting…sigh! The county had just updated their website to make online permitting happen, and I had started the process prior to that launch, so we had to change from using email to web submission mid-process which also added to the confusion and time lag.
Once we had all of the forms, in the proper format, the rest was ‘easy’ and our windows will be permitted! Part of the reason this is important to me is this is the biggest window in our house, it’s huge, almost floor to ceiling, and it needs to be compliant if we ever want to sell our house (in my opinion!) It’s also going to be a huge energy savings and keep the room cooler in the summer, and warmer in the winter. As it is, our living room basically acts as a greenhouse. Ahhhh, the joys of a pre WWII house. Of course, once the permit got submitted payment was requested, and it was not ‘cheap’, like anything worth doing, right? (Eyeroll, California is very expensive, to put it gently.)
Anyway, glad we are ready to proceed- the sad thing is, with everyone getting home projects and improvements done this year, we may not get the windows shipped/ready to be installed until after Thanksgiving, and it may be late December/Christmas if we are lucky that they do get installed! Weather dependent, of course-since it’s a huge, Western/Bay facing chunk of wall we are opening up- including stucco and our redwood lathe walls that they will be breaking and repairing. But this year looks to be a dry one in Northern California, so that may work in our favor.
Another part of this project is we hope to get serviced in conjunction with the windows is the hardwood flooring restoration in our living room and perhaps most of the rest of our home, which is all hardwood or parquet hardwood, except for the bathrooms and kitchens. The floor under our huge picture window is so water damaged, as well as some water damage under two smaller windows we are also having replaced, plus wear and tear from years of abuse and this houses’ years as a rental, it’s really time to show the parquet floor some love. I look forward to having this done almost as much as the windows, knowing how satisfying it will be when it all comes together!
Melissa Winning 