Travel with Kevin and Ruth: Heading out on Tuesday!

I spent the day on Wednesday putting the window I had removed back together. All four of Igor's RV windows needed to be refurbished. The channels and tracks were all full of 31 years worth of gunk and had never been maintained. This causes the drain outlets to become blocked, and the windows start to leak.

It doesn't appear that they have ever leaked from the actual seal around the frames themselves.

Which is good, because the one window I had taken out in order to facilitate the installation of the new bed frame had been a pain in the butt to get out in the first place!

Rebuilding the windows is a very finicky job. And it's hard on the thumbs and fingers trying to get all the rubber weatherstrips (called "glazing") into place.

Using the trampoline as a workbench.

There is a workbench in the garage, but it was much nicer outside, plus it's better to keep the weatherstrips in the sun to keep them more flexible and pliable.

Putting the window frame together.

Thursday was a nice day with zero rain in the forecast. Perfect day to reinstall that window. I lined the frame with lots of butyl tape, and set it into place, tightening each screw one turn at a time until the inside retaining ring tightened the frame against the exterior wall with lots of excess butyl tape squeezing out so that you know there is a good seal.

The finished product.

You can see where the butyl tape is being pressed out of the gap around the frame. This is exactly what you want to see to ensure a good seal. Then you just trim it off after the fact. It takes a couple of days to fully seat.

Overall, I'm really happy with the way it came out, except that the glazing on two of the four corners isn't smooth. I've read that it settles over time as the rubber shrinks. It doesn't affect leakage though, so I'm not worried about it.

After that, I did the small window in the kitchen. It would have been easier installing the glazing on a workbench like I had done with the window I had removed, but it was not worth the extra effort of having to remove and reinstall.

Small window before. Notice the gaps in the weatherstripping that shrinks over the years.

After... much better!

The screen on the small window was in bad shape. I thought the plastic was deteriorating, but it was just years of gunk never having been cleaned! After soaking it in a bucket of soapy water for a couple of hours, it actually came out quite nice and is totally usable.

So, two windows done, and two more to go. They should go fairly quickly now that I kind of know what I'm doing. The first one is always the toughest.

Meanwhile, Ruth has all the curtains finished and I need to install them. And the bed is ready to do, but I want to finish the last upper window first because I'll make a bit of a mess that'll need vacuuming, so I'd rather get that done before getting the bed ready. The new mattress needs to be cut and sewn up, but that shouldn't take very long, neither will installing the air flow tiles under the mattress.

Three working days left, and we will be heading out on Tuesday!

Remember when we went deep sea fishing the other day? We had put some of the fish in the freezer until Lindsey returned from Ottawa, and last night for dinner she did totally homemade fish and chips for everyone!