Window Stickers

I framed the shell of my cabin during the summer of 2003.  In the waning days of fall, I installed the window and door package.  I used a borrowed bucket lift truck to install the high gable windows on the cabin’s front wall.

Given the hurried nature of the work, I didn’t take time to remove several small (reluctant) stickers from the exterior panes before fastening in place the windows.  I reasoned I could remove the stickers later.  The fact I needed a bucket truck to install the high windows should have been a clue I was making a mistake.

For the following nineteen years, several times each year, I glanced up at the stickers and regretted not removing them.  Earlier this summer, I pointed out the stickers to someone visiting the cabin.  “I’ve been planning to remove those stickers for nearly two decades now,” I said.  “It hasn’t worked out so well.”

Over the weekend, Desiree and I dragged my extension ladder out from storage in the lower level of the cabin.  After a bit of wrangling, we hoisted the ladder to the elevated deck and I finally climbed up to the windows and scraped the badly deteriorating stickers from the glass.

When initially designing the cabin, I envisioned a wall of glass in the front.  I thought about that as a I scrubbed at the glue from the last sticker I removed.

Probably a good thing I used less windows.

A Window Sticker

Me Removing Stickers

—Mitchell Hegman