Most window photographs are taken on the last afternoon. This is the rest of it — one job, two days, in the order it happened.
The wall had one small bedroom window in it and no opening for anything larger. Turning that into a Bay meant cutting a structural wall, carrying the load on a new header and hanging the projection off it. If you are deciding between a Bay and something simpler, the middle of this page is the part worth reading — and here is a kitchen where nothing structural was needed at all.
Nothing is cut until the exact size is agreed to. Here the outline is marked-out on a photo on the siding of a second-floor bedroom wall, next to the original small window it replaces. What the drawing settles is not just width and height — it is where the support-header will land and how far the unit will project past the wall.
Scaffolding first, then the siding, then the sheathing. A brand new Bay Window unit that replaces an existing Bay drops into an opening that already exists; this one did not. Turning a flat wall into one that projects means making a hole into a structural wall of an occupied house, which is the part of the job that decides whether everything after it goes well.
The wall and ceiling above the opening are carrying weight. After a Structural Engineer's drawings are approved by the local municipality, a Power Beam engineered support header now supports it instead, spanning the new opening and bearing on framing at each end. This photograph is the whole reason the job takes two days rather than one — and it is the part no finished-window photograph usually shows.
A Hat Box Bay frame, built exactly to this opening and delivered in one piece. Hat Box means the frame carries an ear past the glazing at each end, glazed on both sides — the shape is drawn out on our Bay & Bow page.
Right off the scaffold and right into the opening. The Bay unit is set on its seat, pushed back to the sheathing and held while it is checked for level and plumb in both directions before anything is fixed.
A Bay unit hangs off the wall, so something has to hold the weight of the far edge up. Twenty-gauge steel cables run from the head of the unit back into the framed header, taking the weight of the roof and everything the projection carries. Installed properly, a Bay unit will not sag and will stay level. Installed badly, it starts to show slowly, over years, until the sashes stop closing.
Set, fixed and weather-sealed, with the head and sides wrapped while the exterior is finished around it. From here it is trim, capping and glass.
Two days from the first wall cut. What was a flat bedroom wall with one small window letting in very little light or air is now a sealed unit with a seat that can be sat on, with the glass carried out past the wall on three sides.
This was a Hat Box Bay. There are six shapes and they are not interchangeable — the ones that project squarely need more roof and more header than the ones that turn gently. All six are drawn out, with sizes and costs, on our Bay & Bow Windows page.
The wall has to be opened and headed. The siding and sheathing come off, the opening is cut, and an engineered header is sized and set to carry the load the wall above was taking. Only then does the unit go in. That structural work is why turning a flat wall into a Bay is a different job from replacing a Bay that is already there.
If it is going into a wall that carries load, yes. The opening interrupts the studs that were holding the weight above, and a header spanning the opening and bearing on framing at each end takes it instead. On the job photographed here that is an engineered Power Beam, not a stack of dimensional lumber.
Two things. The seat carries down to the wall below, and steel support cables run from the head of the unit back into the framed header to carry the projection. A Bay hangs out past the wall, so its far edge has to be held rather than simply propped — this is the detail that decides whether a Bay is still square in ten years.
The job photographed here took two days: one to open the wall and set the header, one to hang the unit, support it and glaze it. A like-for-like replacement into an existing opening is quicker. We give you the timeline at the in-home visit, before anything is booked.
A Box Bay whose frame carries out past the glazing at each end, with windows in those ears as well as across the front. It is one of six shapes we install — the others are drawn out on our Bay and Bow Windows page.
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