Hi fellow DIYers,
Today I have an easier project to share but one that’s so important to remember to do to rid a room of a draft!
Kids Accidental Destruction
So our son is one heck of an active, energetic little dude. He’s always getting into trouble in one manner or another. One of the things he was having a lot of fun doing over the summer was “painting” the window frames. With water. Wood frames and water don’t do a very good job of behaving well together! I didn’t really realize the damage until this winter when it was getting damn drafty in the house. Last year it wasn’t that drafty when we got the Windows newly installed so I was a little confused and annoyed. I was sitting with him the other day playing with something when I had my hand on the window sill holding myself up or something and I felt this brutal, freezing cold draft! I was like whoa what the hell I gotta figure out what is causing that. I took a close look at the PVC window build itself and that was solid so I was sure that wasn’t the culprit. I then looked at the wood between the window and the frame and saw these crazy gaps in the caulking! It immediately hit me, that when the little man was having fun with his water, it was bucking out the wood from the frame and ruined the caulking. Not a big deal but I did make sure to show him and have him put his hand there to see the damage and why we needed to not squirt water at the window or keep water on the window frame. Lesson learned for all of us lol.
So now that I surveyed the damage it was time to get to sealing! I may be weird but I love opening a brand new tube of caulking lol. That noxious odor coming from the tube is fun!
Thankfully the caulking guns that they sell in most hardware stores give you all you need to open the tubes. It took me a little while to realize that! Once you know of it, you’re a changed man that’s for sure! (Or woman, they do this too!)
Just put the tip in and squeeze the handle and bam it’s got a decent cut for you to work with. Some caulking tubes also have an additional layer of seal between that and the material which the caulking gun has a long metal stick at the end to pierce it. This one didn’t have that so I didn’t need to do it but I showed the little man that anyways, he thought it was pretty cool.
The outer frames even had the damage so I had to do it to the entire set of windows. Not too bad but I wanted to make sure I assessed all of it before getting to work.
So I tested it out to make sure that it was the caulking that needed to be fixed. I tried a small spot first, put my hand there to feel the draft then and sealed it up and put my hand there after. The draft was a heck of a lot smaller than it was before, just partially done. I knew I was on the right track! Now it was time to start applying the stuff to a lot more of the area and see.
Once I got the whole first window done, I compared the feeling from the finished one to the others that weren’t finished. Night and day difference let me tell you! I was glad that I figured out at least a portion of the draft issue we were dealing with!
Now that I had finished most of the window, this point here was where I would stop using the caulking from the tube and gun. I had put what they call a long bead of caulking along the window frame but stopped a little short of the corner at the opposite end. When you are smoothing out the caulking, you are going to push it to get it in to the creases between all the stuff and that’s going to end up bunching up. If you stop short you’ll save yourself some caulking in the end by not going right to the edge. Now that I pushed it from the beginning to here, this was the extra caulking I had left to go to the corner and then some. Plenty of it for you to use! Not a huge saver but if you have a lot of windows to do, this could be the difference of opening a brand new second tube and using just one tube. Adds up!
This is what it looks like after I’ve smoothed it all out. I ended up doing both the top and bottom part of the wood as they connected to each other and the window frame. I wasn’t specifically sure where the draft was coming from, it could be from the bottom as well so I did both. The funny part is, I think it came out pretty good of a smooth job! Want to know what the super expensive, ultra important tool I used for smoothing it out and pushing it?! Two squares of toilet paper! Lol. I would fold two squares of toilet paper and use that to push and smooth out the caulking and I think it came out pretty good, not perfect like a professional but decent to the untrained eye!
The corners were the hardest part to make look good for sure lol. That’s where I needed the tool to use it but that’s fine. That 9$ repair job will save us probably 100$ or more on hearing and air conditioning over the year. Solid win for me and a fun little project to do with the little man!
This is my entry for this weeks @build-it contest for DIY stuff! You can find the contest post here!
@build-it/build-it-weekly-contest-10-hives-10-bros-and-2250-builds-up-for-grabs
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