Finally!!

Let's just start off by saying that this has been the house project from you know where. Hence, its completion is worth sharing. One of the many reasons why we haven't worked in our basement much is because I've wanted to get bigger windows in the bedrooms, mainly for safety reasons. I am ultra-paranoid, and I'll freely admit it, but I simply didn't want my children sleeping in a room where they could be trapped in a fire or some other emergency. We had all the other windows in the basement replaced earlier this year, but have had these last two windows hanging over our heads for too long. We found out how much we needed to dig out for egress windows and started digging. Enter Nightmare #1. Our dirt didn't have rocks in it, but it might as well have for as rock-hard as it was. Since I'm usually the picture-taker, there's no pictures of me digging, but trust me, I did A LOT of digging. And many times I felt like I was digging my own grave. We had to break up the dirt with a pick-axe first before we could shovel it. So it took us a good two months to dig the holes we needed. And I have a much greater appreciation for those who do manual labor.

Pretty deep hole, right?! We had to dig an extra foot so we could just leave the slab in concrete in the hole rather than pay too much money to get it hauled away. Getting the holes dug was HUGE, so I was really excited to call the people to cut the concrete. They showed up at 7:15am (sorry neighbors) and had the concrete cut for both windows in about two hours. Nice work guys! That was one check I was happy to write, because we didn't have to do the work!!

Later that day our window guy came to install the new windows. Again, lovely work. Especially because someone else did everything. We thought we had the measurements all good so the window would just swing open, but we were off a bit and the window hit the siding and wouldn't open all the way. That was just a Bad Dream though as we just had to notch the siding a bit to clear the way.

So then I ordered a couple of window wells and had them delivered. I figured the really hard part of the job was done and putting dirt back in the hole would be a lot easier than taking it out. I was somewhat right. We put the window wells into the holes we had dug and found a bit of a problem...we couldn't put the well right up to the house foundation and still be able to open the windows all the way (they are casement windows, and the whole thing swings open). Bring on Nightmare #2. Trying to position those suckers so they were as close as they could be, but far enough away so the windows could open was not easy. We spent hours trying to get them both just right. Eventually we did, and we figured that we'd just find something to cover up the dirt that was still exposed next to the house.

Well, in trying to figure out the best possible solution, I called our window guy to give us some ideas. He came over to look at the problem and said to me, "What size of window wells did you get?" I said, "36 inch ones. The ones you told me to get." "Ummm, I hate to tell you, but those aren't 36 inch window wells. Those are 24 inches." NIGHTMARE #3. The stupid window well people delivered the WRONG SIZE. And stupid me didn't measure them before we installed them. I was almost in tears at that point, but had enough anger to call the window well people to tell them the problem. They were very apologetic and had the window wells I paid for at our house in an hour. And we just got two free window wells, as they let us keep the original ones they brought. Maybe when I get over all of this I'll start digging again and we can actually use them on some of our other basement windows. Someday.

Sooo...the 4th and final Nightmare was having to dig out and remove the wrong size window wells and install the right ones. Thankfully I have wonderful family members who came over to help, so that project took less time than I thought it would. We had spent so much time and money on this project that we figured we had to do it right. The correct size window wells look awesome, and we can open the windows without a problem!!

The bigger windows bring so much more light in those basement bedrooms, and now the rooms are safer!! Although I wish it hadn't been so hard, I'm glad we did it. It was worth it in the end. Here's hoping our children thank us someday...