stuff to do today

[mellowtigger]

I hear the frogs singing again today, same as yesterday. They don't do that for long. I expect today or tomorrow to be the last day I can hear them from my house, a block away.

Here's the dwarf cherry tree, blooming in north Minneapolis in my back yard. I suppose I should start a water drip for it. I don't want the tree to feel water stressed, making it drop all the fruit immediately after it forms. I really hope this year I finally get a crop of cherries.

I have an appointment this afternoon for Minnesota Rusco to give me an estimate to replace some windows, and tomorrow morning Renewal By Anderson will do the same. MN Rusco is where I ordered back in 2019, and that turned out extremely nice. That was expensive, though, and I worry that inflation these last few years will make it even worse now.

I need both end windows upstairs to change from casement to double-hung, so in theory a window air conditioning unit could be hung in each bedroom. Meanwhile, I want the current double-hung windows in my bedroom to switch to casement, because it is SUPER COLD or SUPER HOT in my room with the current wind blowing through the rotted out windows. The money I've collected for the last year at my current job had this expenditure in mind. I just hope it's enough. I'd hate to get down to zero savings again. I know that's how most Americans live, paycheck to paycheck with no buffer for medical emergency, but it's not fun living like that. I've been there.

And I should go to the grocery store this morning too, before the appointments begin, so I'm ready for next week at work.

Comments

[scrottie]

I hope you'll pardon me, but instead of trying to make decisions on this yourself, consider hiring a handyperson to try to navigate it. For non-major expenses, the extra effort probably doesn't make sense, but since this is a major expense and there's potentially someone with a lot lower margins who could do a lot more of the work, it may be worth a shot. Corporations have overhead, including shareholders. I don't know how much of the estimate are the windows themselves and how much the installation but guessing from the numbers, the installation is probably a lot of that. And if things are rotted, a handyperson might do a better job of rebuilding the framing around the window than a company focused on just installing the windows. Anderson and other windows are available wholesale at building supply companies.

Probably doesn't translate at all, but not long ago, I re-did a bunch of framing before re-installing and re-bedding windows on the camper. That was the larger part of the job and I could see a repair shop just looking the other way on that. Still have a few to do too. That's an ongoing project. The camper is basically a house framed with 1/2" x 3/4" pine sitting on a Toyota chassis. I really need to stick a modern engine in there that has EFI and a catalytic converter, not that she moves that often...

[mellowtigger]

That's a reasonable idea. Unfortunately, it's hard to get someone to work out here. I contacted some handymen a while back, just trying to get my front patio door replaced. It took a while to find someone to do it. He did a great job, and I really appreciate it.

(Strangely, I see that I mentioned needing it done, but I don't see a post mentioning when it actually got done.)