Replacing Windows: Part One

I recently went to the Cape to help my father replace windows on my parents' house. Families are crazy--we all know this. Our particular dynamic goes like this:

My father mentions to me about two months ago that they've decided to hunker down and stay in the house for the long haul, so he's going to make some updates. (He built a two-story garage practically single-handedly in West Peabody when I was little; but, he's 73 now. I have mixed feelings about this because for a while my siblings and I tried to get him to sell the house for a tidy sum, and live some place more manageable, closer to one of us kids in the winter of their lives. But no go. Stubborn, and emotionally attached to the house is my Mum (it used to be my grandfather's house), and my Dad wants to reap the rewards of a Cape house for their retirement.

My Dad decides to get the windows in time for my brother's vacation on the Cape without telling or even maybe, asking him if that what he wants to do on his vacation. My brother says he'll come back another weekend to do it. My sister and I, not asked to help, decide to go, too. I do, because I feel bad that my brother, being the only boy, is expected to help. I should have stayed home and watched those episodes of GH and Mad Men waiting for me on my DVR.












It goes a little something like this: I drive down on Saturday morning of Labor Day weekend and say I am only going to be able to help one day and stay the one night. I was starting a new job, after all, and had to get back in time to feel the full weight of the Day of Suck (thanks, Big G). When I call from the road, expecting perky workers ready to roll, I get a gravelly-voiced Dad saying he was waiting for Tom to go to the store. For what? I asked. I don't even remember what it was, but I eased my foot off the gas pedal from going 80 mph, because, apparently, there was no rush to get there.

I brought work gloves for everybody! I announce when I arrive. Dad and Tom are still not home. When we do get started, we have no idea of what we are in for. All the necessary tools are not assembled. We have no idea how long it will take (Tom had suggested Dad do a test run on one ground floor window to see--he didn't) or what the hell we are doing. Tom says let's just hire someone to do it. I start looking at the Coupon Saver flyers and Brenda's looking through the yellow pages, then goes online to check out some information about how the hell to put in a window.

And there are twenty.

We manage to put in one window and it only takes us two hours of grumbling, feeling like we're just in the way (Brenda and me), my Dad acting as foreman and Tom being the grunt, bearing the weight of the window. So it's two o'clock at this point and time for a lunch of fattening chips that taste like soap because they're stored in the same cabinet as the laundry detergent (no matter how many times we complain and tell my mother to move them, she refuses).

We each take a window and get three more in in the somewhat pouring rain (thanks Dorothy or Eduardo or Fay). Feeling emboldened, like Biff in Death of a Salesman, who feels like there's nothing like working with your hands out in the air with your shirt off (no we did not take our shirts off), we have time to do one more, we say, which one is hardest? The dreaded Attic Window.

Out comes the ladder, and we ready the window, Brenda and Tom taking turns on the ladder, me handing out tools and the new window from the inside out. We get it in and there's three inches of air at the top. My God, my father says, incredulously, looking at me. As he stares, dumbfounded by his miscalculation, Tom is turning green at the top of the ladder, holding up the damn window against the house. Well let's take it back in, Dad, so he doesn't have to hold it! I hiss.

It's dark. We are all tired. I'll have to build a new frame, my Dad says. I'll get the plastic and the staple gun, I say. Brenda hands the staple gun to Tom, and as I walk around the outside where the ladder is, Tom is just leaning against the house on top of the ladder. I know he wishes he was smoking a cigarette. What? I ask. We ran out of staples, he sighs. I go inside and Brenda says that Dad doesn't know where the extra box of staples is.