egress windows: concrete cutting

When I got home from the farmers' market on Saturday, I heard a rumbling outside with a high pitched squeal.  I scurried outside to find someone in the hole outside my basement window.

And someone was holding a very, very big saw.

It was loud and dusty, and I decided, despite running the oven for three hours straight baking pies and pie crusts for a party and sweatin' my behind off, it was much nicer in the kitchen.

Someone asked me what egress windows are so I'll explain.  Old houses tend not to have large windows in the basement.  If you want to call a room in your basement a bedroom, you have to have a window that is big enough for a firefighter to crawl through while wearing an SCBA (self-contained breathing apparatus).  If you retro-fit a window,  it has to meet certain specs like a certain distance from the floor to the bottom of the window and certain total square-foot window area.   

Once this puppy goes in, I'll have a giant bedroom in the basement with it's own bathroom.  I have no air conditioning, but I have concrete walls down there that stay cool all summer.  I can't wait.