Basement Window Replacement

K's college friend has been working with her off and on for the past year or so.  It's been nice for her to have someone else to help with the workload. 

Starting a few weeks ago, the two of them have been working on our basement in between projects for clients.  I'm not sure why she chose to start working on the basement now-- it's not really an urgent project, but maybe she just thought it would fit in well between the other paid jobs.

To start, they replaced the double window in the main room of the basement.  This window was maybe original to the house and maybe not.  Once they opened up the wall it actually looked like the original window was smaller, because there was some concrete repair added to the cement block around the window.  Either way, it wasn't a great window-- pretty drafty, rattled a lot when the trains go by. 

The egress pit outside the window also wasn't to code-- probably couldn't really call it an egress at all.  So they dug out the egress pit a TON.  Made it fully to code and lined it with some solid pressure-treated wood, landscape fabric, and stone.  She also had to make a lid for the pit, since our two-year-old would probably fall down the hole the first time we ventured out in the yard this spring....

K had a salvaged window from a home addition project a few years ago, and she'd been storing it in the garage all this time.  It was bigger than the window that was here in the basement, so they had to knock out TWO additional rows of cement block! 

It lets in a ton of light, and it's a better-made window.  It should cut down on the street and train noise coming in.