Put a greenhouse window in your kitchen to bring in more natural light and make the room feel larger. Visit Ron Hazelton's website for more home improvement projects at https://www.ronhazelton.com/

Transcript:

Well, this ought to be a pretty good trip, I'm headed to Laguna Beach, California, to visit Jenny Kemp.

Jenny has asked my help in installing a garden window in her kitchen. These box shaped windows not only provide an ideal place for indoor gardening, they also make rooms feel larger. The first step is to remove the old window's sliding glass panel. This is simple enough to do, I just have to lift it up and then pull the bottom outward. Jenny removes the screens the same way. To get the fixed panel out she uses a hammer and a pry bar to loosen and remove a center brace. With it gone the fixed panel lifts out the same as the first. Our next step is to remove the exterior trim.

What I'd like you to do, first of all, is take this utility knife and right in here, where these two meet, just go ahead and cut the paint away. The reason I want to do that is that this is fairly heavy paint and it's actually, could be acting a little bit like glue. So that'll help this break away. That's perfect and drive it right in there!

After Jenny scores the rest of the trim, we go to work, prying it off.

Pull it in this direction, the other way. There you go. Just wiggle it around till it comes off.

OK!

OK, good.

With all the trim gone, we have access to the old aluminum window frame, that's next to go.

OK, now this is kind of caulked in place here. So what I'm going to do is give this a whack from the inside here. If you can kind of pull from the outside, Jenny.

Alright.

But keep your balance because this could let go, at any, you know at any time it might come slowly, I really don't know.

OK.

So this [hammering] Good that's going, let me get the block up here at the top.

OK.

OK. Free. Oh, that's good.

That's good.

Just see if you can pull it completely out now.

Great, you got it.

Excellent. What's left in here right now is the original window frame that the original wooden windows were in. It's got to come out for the window that we're putting in today. It's held in place right now by nails, there are pairs of them, some here and here and all the way around.

I showed Jenny how to use a nail remover.

Get those.

We drive the dual prongs up under the nail head with a hammer.

We just push down on the handle here and it begins to pull the nail out. Then we can flip it over to the other side and then rock this right out. OK Jenny, I think we've got all the nails out here.

OK.

Just pull the sill and the top, there we go. Very nice.

Now we've got to do two things to get this opening ready for our new window. The first thing is that we have to finish off this wood right here and right down here, because it's going to be seen from the inside. So that work is mostly cosmetic, but we've also got to make an adjustment on the outside of the building here. Let me show you what I mean. Our new garden window has what's called a nailing flange. That's actually what's going to hold it against the house right here. It attaches to this two by four, actually the front edge of it but in order for that to happen, we're going to have to cut away a strip of this siding about two and a half inches wide.

OK Jenny, what we're going to do is start building up this bottom sill here because it's a little bit low right now, let's pull it out. OK, so we're going to nail this in place. Well we could use a hammer and nail.

Right.

Nahhhh, we're not going to do that. I believe in nail guns.

Oh man,

OK?

Oh my gosh.

So here's how you use this.

After a quick lesson on using a butane powered nail gun, Jenny is forsaking hammer nails and gets to work.

OK well, set that gun right over there. I'm going to give you a little bit of a smaller gun, right here. Same idea and we're going to start putting some pieces on the top now. This is a piece of shim, actually just a spacer.

Jenny nails the shim in place, and then we add a trim piece.

Now we're ready to begin cutting away the siding, this small handheld cordless power saw is lightweight and easy to handle.

Now, just a matter of following that line.

Jenny finishes off the cut and the siding is easily removed.

OK.

Now we will make sure that our new garden window is watertight, we'll be using two materials. Caulking, which we will be putting on later and this, this is waterproof flashing paper. I've inserted that behind the sheathing up here and made sure that each section overlaps.

We fold the flashing paper back over the siding and tape it down to make way for the fin around the edge of the window. Next, Jenny spreads a heavy bead of silicone caulk around the edge of the opening. This will give us a good seal between the window fin and the framing.