One of Janis' concerns was just how big the front and rear windows of the house would be. She has some difficulty visualizing how things will look when done - especially when all we have is some drawings and the plans. Rather than just press on and risk a very costly redo later I find it a worthwhile exercise to take the time to mock up a project if it is possible. Since we are creating the window bucks, which are the same size as the final windows it was an easy matter to stand up the biggest windows of the house and space them out as they will appear in their final configuration. While we will do one more check after I weld up the structural steel and put all the pieces of the window assembly together, doing it now while we had just the plywood cutouts meant getting an approval at this stage would take away all expensive risk down the road. I had cut out two plywood pieces for each window. These were fastened together with two by fours in-between so they mimicked the actual windows in depth as well as all the other measurements. Here's a shot before the second sheet of plywood was screwed on. I won't glue these pieces so we can reuse the pieces that are large enough.
I carefully measured things out and even drew a few lines on the bucks to show where the window frames would go. Then I called Janis into the shop so she could see for herself. These windows will be two feet off the floor so I provided Janis a clean place to kneel, giving a better feel of just how high and BIG this window set will actually be.
All fears of possible being too small vanished in an instant. We checked out the other windows as well and now we can go forward with no fear of changes down the road.
Stay tuned for more...
-dan
