Tall, light and frosty

We can now call the front of the house finished… Okay, almost finished: we still need to re-stain the underside of the eaves to return them to their original tone (the previous owners re-stained the original cement-green-stained redwood to an odd light-blue color), but that's a pretty specific painting detail.

In this case, I'm talking about a new side-light window and trim which finishes off the "construction" part of the exterior-front of the house.

Originally, our Eichler design was not open to the street — an odd design detail. You can't see out and no one can see in (at least from the front… from the back, you're in a fishbowl).

It seems the previous owners either broke the original window or really wanted some cross-ventilation in the room that we now call the "office". Previously, it was a bedroom with hand-painted frogs and green shag carpet — in their defense, "it was the 70s" and I could definitely see the benefit of some air in this room — but we wanted to return it to the original.

The original Mistlite glass is now only available in 8ft sections. Fortunately, the original piece was just a few inches taller and I was able to rebuild the sill and extend it up a few inches… hopefully, too, protecting it a bit from future floor-level breakage. We opted for tempered glass, too, which makes it a bit safer.

Diablo glass stopped by today to install the new piece. I had provided them with a very specific template… it's not a complex shape, but when we were cutting a patch from Masonite for the window, it was just as easy to make two (and deliver one to the glass shop and tack the other into place) to ensure that the new piece was exact.

The glass, plus delivery and installation was just a shade over $300 — a real steal, methinks, as I'm not confident transporting glass and having someone deliver it, lift it into place back it with silicone and tack up the new blocking I made was worth it — one false move and I'd have a new, broken side-light window.