High Places

Last Monday I talked about putting in a new window. I thought I’d talk a little more about the project. The window is replacing a door in an old house. This in and of itself isn’t so hard. We simply built in the studs the way we would with a new construction and sized it for the size of the window, filling in the area where the door once was.

The problem is the height. The door in question lead to a rickety staircase. The stairs weren’t really necessary, and had some issues involving power lines and the placement of cellar doors. Rather than replacing them, as originally planned, we simply removed them.

We were originally going to use a ladder for the exterior work, but notice those cellar doors? yeah. Not working. So I ran off and rented some scaffolding.

Although I have been on scaffolds before, I had never rented them or set them up before. This proved an experience in and of itself. The latches used to assemble are quick and easy to use. Luckily they were self explanatory, because the directions included with them were nothing but “though shalt not”s and “examine all parts for wear and damage!” instead of actually saying what to do. The best part was where the assembly instructions said not to try to set them up without someone who had done it before present. Yeah, real helpful.

As you see, we got it all set up. With three people on it, it took about half an hour. If the pieces weren’t so heavy, I think I could have done it by myself in that time because a fair amount of the time was spent arguing.

As much of a pain and expense as they are, once we got the scaffolding up everything went a lot smoother. It’s so much easier to hammer something from a scaffold than from a ladder.

Now I have to run out and buy some more lumber because I didn’t have the right kind, but that’s another story.