Before: there was a giant stick holding the window shut!

We’re just about ready to get the St. John house on the rental market. By the way, we now own this house, so we are highly motivated to make some money off it! The plan is to rent it for a while, as the neighborhood continues to improve.

Among the many issues we’re still having at St. John, one of the more glaring ones was the inability to lock three of the windows. That made it awfully easy for “visitors” to come in and ruin our carpeting. A contractor had wedged brooms and pipes in place to keep them from being opened, but that was hardly satisfactory, and we really don’t want to run the expense of replacing them.

Being the handy kind of guy I am, I devised a $4 solution to the problem:  a $1 post on a $3 set of furniture hinges. Once we paint the post white, it will look just fine, and future residents can feel secure when the window is closed but still be able to open it during those brief weeks in the autumn and spring when it’s pleasant outside in San Antonio!

Here’s the window in its closed state. The wood keeps the window shut.

The piece of wood simply opens via the hinge, and the window will open normally!