How To Cover Up A Window From The Outside

Yous guys! Since I've been soooo busy with the move and getting our house on the market, my good friend Melony fromSledgehammer Queenoffered to write a guest post on a fabulous pull a fast one on she used in one of her recent flips! You are gonna LOVE this remodeling hack. And be sure to bank check out her blog for more details on her awesome firm renovations.

Hi, I'm Melony from SledgehammerQueen! I want to thank Christy for assuasive me to guest post on The Harper House! I love reading nigh the flips that she and her husband do. I'grand currently on the prowl for shiplap so I tin recreate some of the projects Christy does!!

My husband and I likewise flip houses in the trivial town of Hooversville, PA. Our boondocks was a mining town, and like lots of little communities across America, the world has moved on to bigger and improve. People tend to look downwardly on communities such as this, but I've lived here for 34 years and I have to say, it's a cracking identify to live.

We have the beauty of the Allegheny Mountains all around us, and for a community of 700, we have a hardware store, ii grocery/sundry stores, a mail office, a banking concern and an eating institution!! Our goal is to encourage others in surrounding communities to meet the beauty in this town and to desire to live in such a wonderful community.

Today, I desire to share with you our solution to one of those nagging problems- how to eliminate a window in a brick house and go far look not bad on the outside of the home; so hither's our take on this dilemma:

When renovating houses, sometimes it becomes necessary to eliminate windows to reconfigure the layout of rooms. I observe this most often happens with kitchens. My hubby and I tend to piece of work on old houses, and then often, in the kitchen, there are doors to the basement, doors to the the dining room, doors to the hall and perhaps even the back door! Then there are five foot alpine windows and former fashioned hot h2o radiators to work around. This leaves about 3 anxiety of usable wall infinite to hang cabinets on (I exaggerate a bit, merely not much).

Nosotros besides tend to knock downward a lot of walls to create open flooring plans, simply and so you accept even less wall space to work with to configure the cabinet organisation. The good news is, since the walls are down, at present the light from other rooms' windows tend to light up the kitchen, and so you lot tin can eliminate a window and there is still plenty of sunlight streaming in.

Now, here's the dilemma- what do you practice when the house is brick? I'm okay with taking windows out when I know I will be re-siding and no one will always know a window used to be at that place. What are your options with brick? Put a piece of wood in the opening and paint it to lucifer the brick? I have always felt that information technology wasn't an pick to remove a window in brick because I just don't similar this look. Then, inspiration struck!

In our Water Street Firm at that place but wasn't a logical identify to put the kitchen cabinets unless nosotros removed this window.

At present, nosotros actually eliminated this window a couple of years ago. It was located in the corner of the room abreast where the tall white chiffonier now resides.

Since we can't go dorsum and show you lot exactly how nosotros did this, my awesome hubby, Bill helped me do a mock-up of the process. We did the mock-up in an onetime house (the Riverhouse) that nosotros oasis't renovated yet, so agree on to your hats, the following pictures are a little scary!! Hither's an overview of the kitchen (beautiful isn't it?).

Here is the window nosotros "eliminated" in our demo.

I chose this window to do this demo on because it was one of the but ones in Riverhouse that still had a mini bullheaded in it. The mini bullheaded is an important function of this procedure, so fifty-fifty though information technology'south dingy and gross, at least I didn't accept to buy one 🙂

We re-installed the mini blind brackets to the surface of the window and then that we would have the maximum amount of room left after the next stride, which is to install particleboard over the mini blind. When nosotros did this technique at Water Street, nosotros painted the outside of the particleboard black (You will run across this down below). For this demo, we only installed the particleboard unpainted.

For those of y'all non super familiar with round saws, we idea nosotros'd also testify yous how to conform the circular saw for the correct depth to cutting through the plywood. In the above photo, yous tin can come across how far the blade is below the guide. This would be the proper depth to cutting a thicker piece of wood.

Adjusting the blade is accomplished past releasing the lever at the back of the saw, and then moving the blade upwardly or down depending on what you are doing. We wanted to cut through the plywood without cutting through the sawbucks, so yous can run across, the depth of the saw needs to be very shallow equally our particle board is only 7/16″ thick.

Afterwards we got the right depth (above), nosotros then measured the opening of the window and and then marked and cutting the particleboard to fit. Disclosure – the window opening was Actually kleptomaniacal, so it took u.s. iv adjustments to get the particleboard to fit. Hopefully your firm is much straighter than this old beauty.

We then attached the particleboard to the stops at the side of the window with screws. At H2o Street, Beak also caulked around the edge of the particleboard to go on dust and bugs out of the firm.

Hither's an overview of the window covered with the particleboard. Please ignore the white paneling! (Hello 1970's). This house has this great bump-out on both sides of the business firm. Obviously, I would never cover up a window in such a cool feature, simply once more I picked this window because it had the blind 😐

We so installed insulation over the particleboard. At the Water Street house, the walls are fifteen″ thick so information technology was actually easy to install a nice thick layer of insulation. At this business firm (and at virtually houses) the walls are a standard thickness, then I removed half of the thickness of the insulation and so installed it.

Hither is a close-upwardly of the drywall then installed over the installation. We used a spare piece of drywall to only requite you an idea of how the window opening would disappear and y'all would accept a new blank surface to work on. Yous tin meet a glimpse of the insulation (and of course the particleboard) under the edge of the drywall.

Hither'southward what this window looks like from outside now. It looks like you lot accept the blinds airtight, only read on because at the Water Street house, information technology looks fifty-fifty more realistic.

At the Water Street holding, first nosotros installed a brand new window and so it would friction match the other windows nosotros replaced, and deliberately left information technology unlocked. We and so installed a brand new mini blind. Leaving the window unlocked allows for hereafter maintenance, such every bit keeping the inside of the window opening clean or replacing the mini blind.

I'one thousand sure we will accept to be contortionists to address these issues, but worst case scenario, we tin simply remove the window panes, fix what needs fixing and so reinstall them. I know eventually the mini blind will suffer from dry rot, but the good news in this instance is that the window doesn't get much direct sunlight because it is shaded by the garage next door. So, if you're reading between the lines, this window had the worst view of any in the house. The other windows have nice views of the yard and the Stonycreek River which runs along the back thou, so information technology would accept been a much harder decision to decide to remove one of those windows.

To finish the kitchen walls, on the inside we cut a sheet of particleboard to fit the opening and painted it black on 1 side. From the outside, doesn't it just look like the window is open? You are looking right at the particleboard.

But similar in the mock-upwards, nosotros then insulated the opening that was left on the interior side. Over all of this, we drywalled, painted and finished the kitchen.

Right where the refrigerator will become, the window is still there, you just can't come across it!

On the outside we have what looks like a perfectly normal window, with the blinds open (and no lights turned on). On the inside we take a complete kitchen with room for a refrigerator. Do yous have a situation like this at your firm? Will this help you to solve the problem? Let me know!

If you would similar my Gratuitous Printable on "How to Buy a House, and not a Lemon", you tin can find it here. I promise you enjoyed this post and over again I would similar to thank Christy from the lesser of my heart for assuasive me to share this mail service with you, her awesome readers!

Thanks!

Melony @ sledgehammerqueen.com

pin this for subsequently!