Glass Houses

I pulled the trigger on the windows. Went whole hog. Twelve windows (the bathrooms had already been replaced during earlier renovations); three sliding glass doors (we opted against replacing them with French); the double entry doors; the exterior patio door; the exterior garage door; the interior garage door. What the hell.

I had a few more estimates and went with a different company that I liked better. It turns out the first guy wasn't far off for the portion we had discussed. I still toyed with the idea of doing the work myself, but in the end I decided it was easier to just write a check. I have these grand ideas that I'm going to round up a few buddies, get a cooler full of beer, and raise a barn or something. Like a Michelob commercial. Reality is that I have better things to do with my time, and I wasn't looking forward to my project manager asking how many windows I was going to do next weekend.

I thought about buying the stuff wholesale and hiring an installer. Probably could have saved a bunch of money that way, but it would have meant additional risk and hassle. I need simple. I have this problem at work; I get myself involved in all sorts of minutiae I could avoid if I just let other people do it.

I was real irritable for about 48 hours after signing the deal. Sales guy was cool about it, but I'm pretty sure I made his quarter. He went out to his van and brought in a whole damn box of his freebies. Coffee mugs, pens, coozies, mints. The kids pilfered most of it right away. They can only drink their juice out of coozie-cooled cups now. My wife has been wise not to serve my coffee in one of his stupid mugs, but I'm over it and just want the stuff installed so I can see some benefit.