Repair or Replace?

One of my most favorite times of the day is early morning. The world is still quiet and sleepy as the bright sun is caressing the dew on the grass and the leaves in the trees gently whisper in the morning breeze. The birds chirp and whistle, singing in a round, while I quietly sit on our bench in the front yard with my steaming cup of coffee and marvel at the beauty of the world around me.

I generally get in 2.5 cups of coffee before I get antsy and need to get up and move. It's time to get things done! Today's agenda includes windows, windows and more windows. After my mishap with mother nature I realized that I must address the issue ASAP.

I decided to start on the destination window. I called to a few automotive 'glass shops' and most just said..."can't help you" or "we don't do that". The best I found was a shop that I have used before, they were reluctant but were willing to walk me through re-sealing the window, when I showed up with pictures about what I needed to do. Thankfully the guy took one look at this pic and said...."they used the wrong seal"

He explained that the rubber was sitting too proud and was uneven. When I got home and took a better look....I could see what he meant. It's along story but lets just say I had pre-ordered the correct seals for the body shop that did the paint, but the shop decided to use their own (favorite) seal....

Seeing as though I had the correct seal in a box in the garage...what did I have to loose top replace it myself?  As Eleanor Roosevelt said "Do one thing every day that scares you".....

Thank you Mrs. Roosevelt....I think I should be good for a week now...

Like any good surgery, I laid out my tools.....

Draped the patient.....








And set forward with 'wild abandon'....OK wild abandon in this case was more like moving forward at a turtles pace because I did not want to mess this up. Thankfully in my technique research (U Tube), I realized that I needed a specialty tool. Now there was a company that exclaimed I NEEDED to have their hard plastic angled window installer tool....which looked a lot like a plastic round tipped screw driver.Educating yourself on U tube is great, it's kind of like looking for a muffin recipe on line... you look at a whole bunch, gleam all the good stuff and then create your own technique.

So I sacrificed a small phillips screwdriver that I had previously damaged, rounded the tip and presto chango I have a high end specialty tool that I didn't need to order from Wisconsin!

I really would love to show you pictures of me straddling the two ladders with the damn specialty tool in my mouth, shouting word of encouragement to my daughter who was in the bus trying to prevent me from pushing the window right through the opening....but discretion is the better part of valor.....it was bad enough my daughter saw how I can react under high stress situations.....but at least I didn't cry.....much.....

In the end, I was a little embarrassed by allowing my emotions to get the better of me and regretted my audible verbal outbursts at myself. The end product was bang on. The seal was nice and flat, it hugged the body panel and the glass was snug as a bug in a rug.

The final test(later that afternoon- when I had summoned the courage to face failure if it didn't work) was the high volume water test. And I am proud to say it passed with flying colors

Another hour of re connecting the wiring for the stereo and speakers, and we were set for the next project...but time is ticking away....