Striking the blinders from the eyes...

...of our house, which are the windows, which are the windows of the soul, of our house.

So besides the roof, which we'll get to soon enough, the worst thing about our new house were the security bars on each and every window. The elderly previous owner had had them installed when her husband had died. Well they had to go, and here we have a little HOW TO lesson for you on removing window bars, only use this information for good.

1) Get yourself a cheap angle grinder with cut off wheel ($29.99 at http://www.harborfreight.com/)

You will also need saftey glasses. I'm no saftey wuss, but believe me you will need them, or you will need to do this with your eyes closed. I use Ray Ban knock offs from the hardware store, but even with these you will get grit and ground metal in and around your eyes.

You will also need a large flat head screw driver, and a set of vise grips.

2) Get yourself something strurdy to stand on: A step ladder, a rolling invalid chair, or a piece of plastic patio furniture.

Here is your adversary:

A close look reveals the one-way screws which you can't even get a grip on with the best vice grips.

Time for the power tool!

3) Using the cut off wheel, cut a nice deep slot into the one-way screw right through the meatiest part.

You will end up with a screw head looking like this:

4) It is doubtfull you will be able to turn your newly slotted screw in the normal way. So insert the screw driver, laying on its side, so as to give yourself a nice torque multiplying length. Then its lefty loosy away.

5) Once you get it loose, you can unscrew it in the normal way.

6) On windows with a emergency exit feature, you will need to go inside to finish the job. You will find something like this:

7) Unbolt everything with the vice grips. Don't worry, none of it is spring loaded.

8) Once the cables are free, simply pull them from the outside of the house, leaving unfortunate holes in the plaster work. But that's a project for another day and another blog.

9) If you aren't as big as me, you may need some help pulling the larger ones off.

10) Ta-da! You are left with a naked window, with holes in the stuco, or siding. But again, that is a project for the next day and/or blog when I paint the house.

So there she is without the bars. Much, much better. Starting to look almost homey.

Day one - part II: Stuff needs fixing

Before we could go any further certain things just could wait...

One of the toilets needed a new valve. And so I replaced what I'm certain is the first of many toilet valves. Those of you that know me know that one of the planks in my political platform is the derth of any decent quality tiolet valves for sale in this country today. In the last apartment, in less than five years, I replaced the toilet valve at least 3 times. It always seemed to be going bad, and then it would completely fail when we were having a party. So I've become adept at changing them even after having quite a few beers. When you only have one toilet, failure is not an option. Now with two bathrooms, this place is like the freakin' White House!

Oh, and by the way, check out our cool three tone green tile job. If anyone has a line on a jadite green toilet to match the tub and sink, drop me a note. Our's was yanked out recently and replaced with a low flow.