Window to the World

This train wreck of a window was nagging me. I was almost certain the wall would collapse if I took anything apart because there is nothing supporting the window void except the window...which is an aluminum frame. But something had to be done so I tore into it.

 

no framing, nothing. just a simple little wood frame so the window can sit there, but the frame is not attached to anything. It's just sitting on the ledge. and it's not stout enough to support the weight of the dirt above, so you can see the stucco has cracked and the dirt adobe bricks have cracked in half.

Here, I have built a new frame. Fortunately there was a stable shelf to put this on about 4 inches wide. This frame is ALSO not attached to anything because it's just dirt on either side of it. When I screwed into the wood the dirt just crumbled. I figured I would embed the frame and window in stucco so maybe the stucco would hold everything there by friction.

This is when I had put the window in the frame I built and was using chicken wire to help the new stucco stay where I put it.

This wood frame is what I added, but it is only 4 inches wide and the opening is 17 inches wide. It's not easy to slap stucco on a vertical surface, but at least it's not a soffit. God help you if you have to scree some stucco upside down. 

The finished project relies on an awning made from my metal roof to shed some water from above because the seam where the new stucco meets the old stucco is never going to be perfect but with the awning to shed rain I figure very very little water will run into the seam. Of course this makes it nearly impossible to replace the window, but I think these windows have a glazing strip that can be removed and the glass can be replaced without too much effort and that will make this fixable in the future if a weedwacker throws a rock through the window.

Before I added a custom bridge to support the crumbling dirt and plaster.

The final view from inside.