John and Juan

This is Saturday, I think.  Anyway, a few days back, on Thursday I think, John the contractor/carpenter came with his assistant, trainee Juan, to put in our window.  John and Juan.  Juan is Spanish, I think, for John; and John is English for Juan.  So John and Juan came and cut a hole in the wall of our walk in closet so we can make the closet into less of a closet and more of a room. 

 

windowout

 

So of course right in the middle of the place we want to put the window, John finds, once he cuts a hole in the sheetrock, a string of wires right in the way and there’s no way around them.  So move more to the right I say, and John and Juan do that and cut another hole and what do you know but more wires.  And no way around them.

Still maybe the window can be squeezed in between the wires.  Maybe they have some slack.  So Juan goes down to the utility room below our closet where the water heaters are housed and they find the wires and there seems to be a little slack.  But getting the slack involves John yelling inside the closet—give me the slack (so he can pull it up)—down to Juan inside the closet below, and of course Juan cannot hear John and visa versa.

So I am involved in a flash back to childhood with me running from John to Juan saying what John said to Juan and then back to John to say what Juan was doing for some 20 minutes.  I say flashback to childhood because WB would insist on trying to repair the plumbing when something went wrong and that would involve him shouting something and usually swearing too up through the floor, like, “Turn it on!” or “Turn it off!”  And of course we couldn’t hear a damn thing he was saying and that would involve more swearing, until if there was more than one of us around we would construct a sort of human yelling chain.  One person would be down below listening to WB yell and swear and then that person would yell (and sometimes swear too) to the person upstairs who had to Turn the blank, blank, blank thing on or off.

Anyway, they found the slack and framed the window and stuck it in.  When you look at a wall, it’s hard to imagine what it will look like with a window in it.  But I can say now that putting a window into wall really transforms the wall.  While previously the wall had been a wall, it now appears more a structure to hold in place a window.  All of the stuff beyond the wall that was previously invisible to the eye is now visible.

 

windowin

 

 

We can see all new stuff from our condo now.  Mostly what we see is the condo complex next door.  But it’s not too bad looking, and if our neighbors were to look over our way they might notice we have a new window.  But seeing somebody has a new window isn’t half as exciting as actually having the new window yourself.

One Reply to “John and Juan”

  1. It is a mighty fine window, as windows go. I’m very happy for you.I wish I had a new window. I think. Are new windows more important the older you get?

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