Burns Avenue House thru CERT Program

I joined the CERT (Central Certification Program) which is a collaboration among Ramsey County, Hennepin County, the City of Saint Paul, and the City of Minneapolis to "promote market growth and increase the competitiveness of qualified small businesses." Participation in CERT streamlines the process of bidding on and contacting for work on renovating government-owned houses in those three jurisdictions. The centralized certification process, which cuts down on having to certify separately for each job and replaces it with an annual certification, makes it much easier for a small business like mine to access contracts available with Ramsey County and the City of Saint Paul. My shop is a one-man operation. I don't have any office staff to help me with all the paperwork involved in getting certified as a responsible bidder for every job. Only having to do it once a year truly makes it even possible for a one-man shop like mine to bid on window replacement and renovation jobs at the City and County. It has worked out well for me.

The first job I got in the CERT program was a house on Burns Avenue on Saint Paul's East Side. I replaced 17 windows and repaired __ more. This photo shows some of the windows in my shop after construction, but before applying primer paint. I always prime my windows with oil-based primer before delivering them to my customers. I do offer the service of painting the windows if the client supplies the paint to match other windows at the house, but most clients prefer to do the painting themselves. Especially with a large project like the Burns Avenue house, the clients usually have already contracted with a professional painter.

I don't know if it is visible with the scale of this photo, but all my windows are designed to shed water without caulking. My clients never have to caulk their windows, which is one of the reasons for the popularity of my business. I have a video showing how this process, that was designed in my shop, works.

This photo shows the windows installed at the Burns Avenue house. The windows, except for the large picture window, have four "lights." Lights are just the number of separate windowpanes there are in a window. I do not add a fake cross piece of wood to just make it look like four lights. I build the window with four integral wood members with stops so that four separate glass panes are rabbited in to create the look you see on the photo. This is the way historic windows were made, and my business is authentically re-creating those historic windows.

I do replace doors as well, but was not selected to replace the doors on this particular project.

Poly Carbonate Storm Windows

The sister of a friend who lives in Kerkhoven, Minnesota called to ask Tom to create some shatterproof storm windows for her screen porch. When she built her screen porch, she did not realize that living in the woods with the strong winds that sometimes blow in off the prairie would mean that occasionally a fairly decent-sized tree limb would break thru her screens causing her to have to replace the screens regularly. She took to putting up a stranded plywood covering over her screen porch on the north side. But that blocked her beautiful view and made the porch and the kitchen next to it too dark on cloudy days.

She had an idea to install storm windows over the screens - ones that could be removed in the summer months when she wanted a breeze in the screen porch. But the storm windows would have to not shatter if a medium sized tree limb hit them in a heavy wind. She asked Tom for his advice and he suggested poly carbonate windows. They would scratch, but they would not break. And they would let the light into her porch and her kitchen.

These photos show Tom measuring for the new storms (left in September) and delivering them (right in November). They needed a little bit of shaving off on some of the edges in order to get them to fit in the real world. Window frames are not always level and plum - which was the case with these windows.

These photos show Tom installing the windows on the client's screen porch. Tom's friend was the helper who kept the screws organized and available. The windows were held in place with stainless steel button clips that can easily be turned to the side to remove the storms in the summer, and then turned back into place when the storms are returned for winter.

The client called Tom a few weeks later to say she loves her new storm windows and was surprised at how much brighter it made her kitchen. She had two corner windows in the kitchen around the corner from the screen porch so she was not expecting that one change on the porch to have so much of an effect on the sunlight that came into her kitchen. It is always heart-warming to know that you have made someone's life just a little bit brighter.
A job well done!