How to Replace a Window EASY

so today in this video we are going to be discussing strategies for replacing well replacing a window in an existing space and basically you're going to measure from the outside of the jamb left to right and then top to bottom you're gonna take that number and you're gonna go to your local windows store and hopefully you're smart enough to do your shopping like we recommend and go to a wholesaler get a cash account get a great price 300 bucks you can get something like this so you order it from from width and then the height and then they're going to ask you how do you want it to open so double hung means that both these move slider means it goes slides left to right or right to left you let them know but if you have a crank on it it's like casement if you have it crank and it opens up they're going to want to know do you want it to hinged on this side or this side the way you order that is from looking from outside the building looking at your window so if it's hinged on the left it'll open to the left so when you're ordering measure left to right top to bottom and if it's a function where it's opening outside imagine yourself standing outside looking at it and hinge is the side that you want to order if you get it wrong you're going to end up ordering a window that opens the wrong direction that is a secret the wholesalers are not going to tell you that they're going to just let you order what you order they're going to give you what you order and then you're going to be in trouble if you get it wrong so when you're changing out your windows the first thing you want to do is get rid of the darn things you don't need glass in the mix now most of these double hungs work on a little spring loaded system once you've tilted it with these little mechanisms out you twist it left and right and they pop out of the little hinge pin hole piece of cake now what you're left with is a little window screen and a frame you know for our purpose today we still have our tie-back sheet out here we haven't cut it yet so i'm gonna do that now and i'm gonna set that up for future success later there we go and i'm going to want to wrap my frame there [Applause] and i'm cutting this a certain way i'm cutting this so that i can wrap wrap this around my framing okay very important we're gonna have a two-stage weatherproofing going on here so it's not just rip it out and stick a new one in we're gonna go through all the sealing up systems for the weather system so that when you replace an old windows like 30 40 years old you're always going to see rot decay damaged bold we're going to show you how to put this in so you're not going to get those problems and that'll be the key now now that that's out of the way you're going to want to have a sawzall if you don't have a sawzall or reciprocator fancy word then you're going to want to go buy one okay 75 80 bucks corded it's the way to go don't waste 300 on something that needs a battery it's just not necessary and they're really not as effective all right and cut it right in half down the middle here and the reason we want to do that is once you've cut one jam you can start peeling it open like an onion and you'll see that in a minute i guess it's always best to plug the darn thing in too there we go all right um before i get started you know okay fine not more of a safety second kind of guy but in some situations this actually makes a little bit of sense to put the safety glasses on yeah it looks like we cut through it all right enough of those we're back so once you've cut through all that mess you've still got your expansion foam to deal with now generally speaking it bonds pretty well but if just get your hammer in there and just turn it that way it'll just let go it's not gonna it's not gonna be able to hold on too tight for you now this is a rather modern window this is a vinyl sash outside with a wooden jamb that's been added after the fact you have a choice when you're ordering windows if you want to get the vinyl extrusion all the way out if you want that you need to know the actual dimension of the inside finish on old houses like this with the walls are all out of whack and lots of layers going on and you want to order your windows at a decent time you don't wait till everything is ready for them and then wait three to six weeks i usually order them just like this so they can receive a three quarter inch piece of wood all right that gives you the ability to customize all the interior jam later now let's see what we got here i'm thinking there might be a screw let's take a peek no aha there it is so you're going to find that most of these windows are installed with screws in the corners let's see if we can pop this crap there it is oh yeah there that's that's a mounting screw right probably have one down here that one already gave up let's check over here [Applause] there it is okay so aside from the expansion foam that's usually the only thing holding these things together let's have a look oh there we go get rid of the dirt we can find it there's another screw i mean they probably pull it up here too yeah now i don't know why people put screws in the middle of the jam on the top and the bottom generally it's not necessary but doesn't mean they're not going to do it if you see a screw get rid of it make your life easy holy cow i didn't think it's easy wow they had another screw there that's creative now generally these jam extensions we call them are just inserted into the reception on the jam usually got a couple finishing nails in it so yeah this might have been some of the first vinyl that came out of the market back in the early 80s that's what i'm thinking there we are all right so now the only thing left to do is get us back to this piece of wood here the original sill the original framing right we're going to clean all this crap back at our own shimming expansion work here's a great time to take your olfa knife which i highly recommend good for all forms of carpentry construction and self-defense in the case of mugging all right just get rid of that junk try to do it in an orderly fashion and it won't make such a huge mess to get rid of the insulation first right and then you can address the shims it doesn't take long to clean all that up so when you call to talk to the salesman i'm not wearing safety shoes today and you're ordering your window you have the right to have them come out as a salesman and he'll do the measuring for you and they'll charge you a lot more for that and you can get your price for installed price or you can get the supply only price now if you want the supply only price you need to be willing to clean this out and do the demolition clean this up know how to order a window which is not rocket science and then install the thing yourself right and for a lot of people that might seem like a daunting task well i've never installed the window before i wouldn't know where to begin well you begin from the beginning all right peel everything back until it's one great big open rectangle that's all it is the fact is if you're home on the day that they install your windows you're going to watch them do it you're going to go wow i really could have done that myself now the price that i was quoted for installed versus supply is usually 50 off so keep that in mind because a guy like me who's handy i can install six or seven windows in a day with a helper um professional window installers will probably do 10 but honestly i just don't like moving that fast anymore getting old and the reality is as a homeowner if you can install even two or three windows a day and they're charging you three to five hundred dollars a window for installation it adds up pretty quick and you'd be like really surprised if you're going to do 10 windows and a couple of doors even if you don't buy the windows at a wholesale price which you should you can get the installation done by yourself and all you need to have is a little bit of knowledge and it really pays off to know how to do this now you're going to find that there's a difference when you're ordering a window if it has a brick facade outside you have to order it with the brick mold and there are a few standard brick mold dimensions and those brick mold dimensions if you order it with brick mold the idea is that the the full width of the window plus the brick mold is now the width of the window gets a little bit tricky so depending on the place you're ordering you might want to clarify with the person you're placing your order with just to make sure that everybody's on the same page but most the time you don't even need a brick mold you just order it as a casement as is and then you can add an aluminum capping or something on the outside i order brick mold all the way around because i'm doing a commercial brown exterior with a white interior and that's just it's a small upgrade it's not a big deal and that gives me the ability to then trim all my new siding on the outside of that brick mold and give it just a little bit more body so it has a bit more presence on the wall there we go okay now we have a hole now i should have mentioned this before we got started before you begin to replace your window and rip something out go and double check the measurement first measure the old window make sure your width and your height write it down go double measure the new window make sure that they labeled it and shipped you the right one there's still human error in this world when it comes to manufacturing and shipping and you don't want to have a mistake with the manufacturing process and have a mistake by not double checking before you start because once you've opened this up if they gave you the wrong size window and it doesn't fit you're going to have a great big sheet of plywood stuck on that hole for three to six weeks while you wait for a window and that's just not very attractive so here's our house wrap now generally speaking if you were to go back in time and you were in the 50s or 60s there was no house wrap they didn't have air barrier they didn't have a clue what any of that meant so they never did this you know if you're changing out windows from the 50s or 60s you're going to see the evidence of the fact that they never did it and the fact that there's going to be advanced rot on the sill so to the degree that you want your installation to last and protect your house you can do that now adding a little bit of house wrap here really is not the whole system it's not the the solution to the problem if we can imagine water coming down the house wrap okay it's going to come down it's going to hit the top of the window and it's going to try to come inside but there's going to be expansion foam so it's going to run left and it's going to run right and as long as water is moving you're not going to cause too much damage so the major issue here when you're wrapping your house is right in these corners it's on the bottom of the sill because when we put in a window especially when it has a brick mold on it which is an extension trim we're only foaming from one side we're always going to have exposed sill on it so what we have to do here to help make sure that this is a long-lasting program that isn't going to have rot and invite ants and other things to go wrong like mice chewing through it is we're going to seal up this outside edge so the best of my knowledge most building code in north america does not require blue skin on residential properties on retrofits but the smart money's going to use it what we're going to want to do is measure out something here that's a little bit wider than the window so that we can come all the way across and then up a few inches so if you can imagine we put the blue skin on flush with the edge in most situations water will hit the window be diverted down the side this is still a water protection barrier okay it'll divert it down down down onto here has nowhere to go it'll work its way out if we can find a way to just wrap the edge just a little bit and seal up the outside then we're in great shape and the best thing about this blue skin is it stretches so let's do it this way and it sticks to itself really good too ah got to be careful which i am not being right now okay so we're going to be more focused with the outside than the inside here there we go self-adhesive okay now the outside you want to stretch it to go around that corner yeah okay so here we go into the edge up the side okay now here's what we're talking about we're gonna stretch that corner around the edge okay throw a couple of staples in it good so now we have a system any water comes down follows the window hits the sill it is sent out this way of course our window is going to be sitting here and we're in great shape so because this is a new build we'll call it because we're adding a facade plus the window we have the luxury of determining how high we want to go now i ordered a window that was 39 inches my cavity is 41. i've got a little bit of playing around room because i wanted to find a nice happy place where when i added my j trim and my siding it was going to be nice and full and finished well and so we're going to do a test first before we get too committed i'm going to pass through the window you're going to set it in the hole and then i'm going to run outside and see how it looks let's do it all right and then we'll go from there this is a little heavy because i didn't take the windows out but i think you're a young guy you could probably handle it okay all right now just hold it there matt i'll come take a look what does this window cost a lot less than you for today all right now what we're gonna do is we're gonna set this up so that um if i was to put another piece of siding on here i'm okay if if i have the first proud section here from here up and a j trim that was really my biggest issue all right now one thing you want to know every window and manufacture i've ever worked with before always sends their own mounting screws it's always attached to the window which is awesome undo your locks you slide that bad boy up right behind here it's a spot where you want to put your screws okay you don't want to have them visible these stops actually serve two purposes one to hide the screw and one to keep the other window from going down too far so we're going to remove those for a moment and we're going to put in the first couple screws there are a few things that you really want to work on when you're installing your window first goal is flush with the outside now if you have a brick mold like i do you want to have someone out there pushing it sometimes you can buy a window and it has a nailing flange just like vinyl siding and you can actually attach that window to the frame of the house from the outside before you do any of that you got to make sure that this bad boy is level what do you think your right side's got to go up i'm thinking it's just a little wiggle in it yeah okay we have a consensus can you lift this just a touch good side down now whenever you're shimming you want to shim under these vertical surfaces on the outside none of the shimming in the middle even matters here i'm really happy with it once we have the base in place which is what we have here now you see there's no contactor anymore because all the weight sits on these you don't have to go crazy shimming what we're actually going to do is go like this can i get you to give that a bit of a lift there for a second we're going to pull our shim back just a little bit so that when i throw my expansion foam in it has the ability to curl around the outside when it expands and that way i'm not relying on the wood to be my thermal break we want to slide to the right and split the difference i got half inch to quarter to zero that is beautiful that's quarter quarter we're on the money once you have this level based on these two points you know your entire window is going to be level and square the only thing you want left now is make sure you're flush just give it a bit of a tug forward make sure you close that gap and then we go and drive these screws home we're going to set the screw but we're not going to drive it all the way tight we don't want to tighten it so it pulls the window out of position this is the key so we're going to set it right in that little gap there and we're basically drilling our own hole for the screw to drive in there we go and we're going to stop short on purpose so make sure everything is sitting flat matt you're pushing in we're driving the screw straight and that'll hold it in place at the bottom only the top can still fall out so you still got to be paying attention to that now we're going to take our shim remember shims are thick on one side thin on the other you want to put it all the way in and when i go all the way and i actually don't get past this vinyl extrusion here to where the screw is i want to get all the way to the screw so what i'm going to do is i'm going to cut my shim in half just by scoring and snapping so i can get right in there we are okay so now i'm going to wiggle down to the screw till i know i'm sitting on it good and then i'm going to come in with a thin side and just create a little extra pressure there okay nice once we've got it fully shimmed and i'm feeling like i'm putting pressure going this way with the shims then i'm going to use the screws to drive it nice and flush that'll keep things from going out of whack does it be right around my head good thing you're not a flower it won't bother you if you don't bother him i know [Applause] you get that from your father now we are going to just tighten up those screws and they'll tighten up without warping the window which is really the key because the last thing you want to do is start tightening the vinyl and having it pulling it out of shape okay because then the operation of the window isn't going to work well your seals aren't going to work well it's just a mess and then you're going to have all kinds of heat loss in the winter time there we go good solid contact take your pinky fingers see if you can work your window if you can't work your window with your pinky fingers it's not lined up properly okay it doesn't take a lot of force nowadays to open and close the window it's really designed so that anybody even cute little 95 year old great grandmother can come over here and close without any effort all right and it's awesome how it still holds itself in position open and with hardly any force at all you can close it so as long as that's working fine close the bottom all right take off the top caps now because now it's time to screw the top in basically we're doing the same thing matt's going to give me lots of pressure coming this way the same concept here remember it opens and closes really easy that's how you know it's still square if it's tight it's twisted out of position and this is where most people mess this up they actually twist it out of position while they're shimming we're going to do the same thing with the screws here in these top two locations matt a little bit of force please and i'm going to pull as well and i'm not going to drive it all the way all right and then this side okay we're good you can come on inside very important here every time you've completed even a half step double check when this is just trial and error no big deal we're not in a hurry the window's not going to fall out at this point okay nice and snug again before we drive the screws in how's it working loving it drive the screws make sure that you're not adding too much torque all of these screws are doing are making sure that you're fixing the frame of the window so it won't fall out of place this is not anything to do with sealing and weatherproofing and everything else it's just mounting it in position now it's time to seal now we disengage the staples on our house wrap outside because we have this gap and this gap is a little bit larger than i would have preferred to have there's no sense putting in twenty dollars of expansion foam in a hole when i can hopefully put this in instead here we [Music] go beautiful oh yeah to add the expansion foam around the window i've even removed all the blocking underneath we don't need it and here's why you don't want to have wood sitting here if you have wood on the bottom of this window now that it's screwed in if you have wood there any water that finds its way around those corners and it will at some point in the history of the house it's going to start rotting that wood when you're adding expansion foam to your window make sure using something that says window and door foam only there's a lot of different foams on the market they have different expansion rates and different pressures that they create while they're curing you don't want to warp your windows out of shape make sure they're fully closed keep everything in place stick the straw right to the outside we want to expand it right there towards the outside filling that gap generally speaking that's our thermal break okay and you don't want to come too close to the inside because this stuff will expand a little bit and if we want to avoid having to trim it all off we'll leave it out there now generally speaking if we start at the bottom we get the added advantage of having structure as we build up the size lead the foam up the side of the wall okay you want to squeeze under control you don't want to have too much of this foam running out of the space that's why it's nice if you can measure a gap of at least a quarter inch for each side of the window when you're ordering it so whenever you have a large space like this gap at the bottom you don't want to try to fill it all at once because you run the risk of having too much insulation and causing buckling but now that this is set up you know it's not expanding anymore and you can see what's going on now we want to shoot towards the fill and this is just to ensure we have a thermal break the first row is almost structural to help hold the weight of the window now we're doing a thermal break and you can see the difference i'm going from right to left and it's pushing the insulation towards me and you know that the gap is filled when it's crawling out towards you here we go okay that is the perfect way to get a thermal break if you have any concerns use the rest of the can now generally speaking one can will do one window all right you have a little left feel free to fill up some of these extra gaps after it's had a chance to set up a little bit it's kind of like spray foam in a house you don't fill the whole cavity at one pass you do a pass you let it expand once it stops expanding then you know how much room there is to fill up and you can go back and throw a little bit of squirt here throw a little squirt here so here's the secret for installing two windows in the same room grab yourself a laser level throw a line right on the bottom of your frame across the wall so that when you're setting your other window in place you can set that window at exactly the same height as this one now that may not seem like a little extreme but trust me if you're doing a kitchen renovation like we are just like we did with the plugs we used a laser line to establish all the plug lines because we're going to use a tile backsplash and whenever using tile as a backsplash every element on that wall needs to be exactly level or it screams you'll get little slivers of tile you'll get things that are out of level and they show up and they just scream at you and it just says hey you don't know what you're doing but if you use a laser level for all the elements of installation you'll be guaranteed to have a successful level perfect looking install that is very very professional and in my opinion is more professional than what most professionals will give you so remember the keys to successful window installation is really just a few simple things one measure properly re-measure and then measure before you take out the old one and put the new one in just to make sure that you're going to be able to complete the job number two don't use anything inside around this window that is going to rot okay you can use all kinds of different wood as far as spacers and that sort of thing until you screw it in but then remove it all now these shims here are made of cedar they will not rot in place so they're going to be just fine and if you want to go the extra mile you can always pull them out tomorrow once this foam is set up and then squirt those holes as well with the expansion foam so once you've got it level and flush and you're weatherproof and you're foamed in and everything is still operating with one finger you are good to go the only thing left to do is to finish all the caulking and ceiling around the outside we're going to cover all that information in our vinyl installation video so if you click this link right here you'll be able to see how we handle transforming an old sensory home like this into something with a brand new facade installing vinyl and trims and weatherproofing in old house

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 359,328

Rating: 4.9123831 out of 5

Keywords: homerenovision, renovision, kitchen renovation, window install, kitchen renovation diy, window installation, window installation replacement, window installation new construction, window installation vinyl siding, window installation old construction, how to install windows, diy window installation, kitchen remodel diy

Id: BbEMx_2huWc

Length: 29min 21sec (1761 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 23 2019