We have, at best, one more week on site before Carla’s family starts to get offended by our absence during the holidays. I’m still hopeful that we’ll get a lot finished in the time left – though every night I’m forced to revise my expectations when I realize that we can never work as fast or as efficiently as I imagine. In architecture school when a deadline was looming, one of our design profs used to tell us to decide how much we wanted to get done, estimate how long it was to take, then cut the amount of work in half and double the time estimate. It was good advice then, more so now.
The replacement glass for our big south window arrived intact on Tuesday afternoon (only seven weeks late). The delivery truck could get no closer than the snow bank at the end of the driveway, so we rigged up a sled from leftover 2x4s and plywood in order to drag it to the building. The snow, at that time, was 20” deep. We were suitably impressed by our own ingenuity. (This was solely Geoff’s idea…I accept no credit - Carla)
Today we installed the glass. Carla’s cousin Donald drove an hour from Belle Cote to give me a hand lifting it into place, and everything went well until I cracked it.
The tragedy happened when I was trying to insert the neoprene gasket against the bottom interior edge. It wouldn’t fit, and I could see the glass wasn’t sitting tight against the exterior of the frame at that point. So I tried to tap it into place with my hammer, using a block and striking at the very edge, where the metal spacer between glazing layers should, in theory, offer some strength. In my rush, I figured I couldn’t possibly do any damage. I was, of course, mistaken.
The good news is that the crack is fairly minor as these things go. It’s about six inches, spanning edge to edge at the corner and on the interior face only. So it shouldn’t affect the performance of the unit… I hope.
I’ve been pretty crabby with others on site when they’ve made mistakes, but I have to admit that no one else has done anything quite this stupid. I will forevermore be a humble and patient boss.
- Geoff
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