What to do about those drafty windows... (part 1)

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but my husband and I live in an apartment. Now, my husband is just about the most handy guy I know. I literally believe that he can fix anything, but he is not used to living in an apartment. He's used to having a house, where if sometime breaks you just fix it.

So when we noticed that every single window in the apartment was drafty what was my husband's first thought?
Oh, I'll just caulk and re install the molding. No big deal.

Um, yes big deal. I really don't think that the leasing office will be thrilled with you taking apart their windows, even if you will fix them.

So we did what normal people do, and we contacted the leasing office to see if we could have their maintenance people come and take a look at it. This is what they said:

"With the draft in your windows we refer you to go to lowes because they have an actual window insulation kit there that is super easy to put up."

Uh.. what? Really, we have to do it ourselves? Can't you at least send someone out to take a look? Nope, apparently not. Thanks.

So what did we do? Well, we went to Lowe's. There's one right next to the apartment complex and like I said, my husband knows his way around a power tool or two. We went and picked up some foam insulation and we installed it in the windows. We picked up one roll and were able to take care of most of the windows in the apartment.

during all of this, we were also dealing with a thermostat issue (that didn't get solved, but got dealt with), so between those two big changes we made, we were really hoping to see some improvements in our heat situation. I mean, we had a window problem, the management told us to get a foam insulation kit at Lowe's & fix the problem ourselves. We did everything they told us to do, so that should have fixed the problem... right?

Wrong:

Can you see the ICE? I can...

This is the picture that we took after we had already added the foam insulation... Ugh. We contacted the management again to see if they would send someone out to take a look at the problem. Because to me, frost/ice on the inside of the windows kind of seems like a problem.

This time the management did send someone (we had another un-related issue that needed to be looked at as well). I wish I had kept the work-order sheet or at least taken a picture, because the adive was priceless.

Put plastic up!

Thanks... thanks a lot.


Stay tuned, there's more to come.