What can I do about a Rough opening that is REALLY out of square?

Question

The house I am living in has a rather interesting problem. Due to what I suspect was Jack Daniels building inspections in this town in the 80's, the footing wall under the second floor dining room looses about an inch across 9 ft. The kitchen to the left is pretty level. If I jump down into the 8 ft crawlspace, I can actually see the crappy pour on which the builders just slapped up stub walls in which the first and second floors are built. To boot, the house settled while being constructed so the sag in that section of the wall was drywalled out of square. There are NO drywall cracks at the dining room window header corners so the builders knew this was a screwed up footing and stub wall. The house was also sheathed with that aluminum coated cardboard and then finished with aluminum siding that one can no longer buy.

Now with all that being said, I want to somehow figure out how to replace the 6'0" x 4'0" dining room window which is 1" out of square. If I run a level across the sill, the left side is 1" lower than the right. As you can imagine, the left to right slider has a pretty nice gap at the top when closed under which I have, for years, been propping a yardstick under in the winter to cut the draft. There has been some slight settling in the window frame at the left pane, held in with double face tape, is slightly askew which tells me that the entire footing foible is being transferred up through the framing under the right half of the window.

The exterior aluminum siding is the most problematic in my mind... I won't be able to find anything to match it or the lipped edging that the siding fits under that the window is wrapped in on the outside.

Is there a way to get, maybe, a 6'0 by 3'10" window and then figure out how to trim out the window? I can't see trying to readjust the entire house on the footing and fixing that. Leveling the entire corner of the house now seems like it would really screw a lot of other stuff up.

Thoughts?

Answer 1

You can order custom size window at homedepot , low's or Pella etc, which is more expensive than standard size. If feasible and depend on the interior and exterior of your building and compatibility with other window sizes, I suggest you make a rough-in for 5'0x3'0 window, that is standard size window, and after the installing the window you can correct the imperfection by triming the window. Ofcourse the answer could be easier if you post the picture of your building and the area that you have problem with.

Answer 2

Inside of the walls, the window starts with just a few boards called a "Header" and a "Footer". You could easily have somebody move, resize or remake them to fit almost any window size.

If I was in that situation, I'd remove the drywall around the window, get a slightly bigger window, have somebody remove, replace or re-position the header and footer, making sure they are really level ( in relation to the world, not the floor ) using something like a clear rubber tube filled with water. Then trim or saw the exterior siding to the size and shape of the new window, dress it up with some flashing around the outside, put up new drywall and trim... a little paint, and all done. Perfect!

Don't worry if a crooked floor makes the corrected window look wrong. Eventually, you may want to have the floor jacked and corrected, and doing so doesn't affect exterior walls. Once the floor is fixed, the already corrected window won't need any adjustment.

Answer 3

It might sound crazy, but you can order a window like you mentioned, although only about 1/2-1" smaller in height. Then place backer rod, round foam, in the gap as a filler, and finally caulk with high quality flexible exterior caulk, or mastic, and scrape the caulk with a putty knife to make it smooth to fill the uneven gap.