Green Rascal Design

Here's hubby with John Lindtner (the guy with the hat) from Building Preservation Services, "working" one one of our window stops. John kindly agreed to come up here from West Grove PA and show Chris how to service our old windows. Of course we still paid him for his time and materials, but his goal is to help as many homeowners take proper care of their homes as possible. I happen to think this is AWESOME, so I'd like to introduce John's work here and help him get more.

Fixing old windows is a bit of work, but it's not quite as scary as one might think. Here is John attaching rope to a sash weight. Notice how everything not window-related is covered with protective cloth. We got the fancy sash rope with the pink diamonds for our windows. (of course we only had 3 windows worked on, so it wasn't so bad.)

You can see here the pink diamonds of the rope, but also that it is secured into the groove with three small staples. Having the staples does not mean you don't have to tie a knot in the rope, just so you know!

We had cheap crappy sash locks on these windows. I don't know who put them there, but clearly not enough thought had been given to the whole procedure. It's a good idea to get good quality sash locks, not at a big box retailer.

In between the upper sash and the lower sash there is a parting bead. In some cases our parting beads were damaged beyond repair and we had to install new ones. Also in this picture you can see a thoughtful little detail that John likes to add to his work to keep drafts down. This fuzz nicely fills the gap where the parting bead and upper sash meet.

Here is a good picture of a stop adjuster. It's a rare thing, but hubby requested them. What they do is allow us to adjust where the stops are if the windows are sticking or rattling. We have one window that rattles a lot in the wind, and we can tighten it up now to prevent that. The other hole in the stop is where previous owners inserted bigger and bigger nails when servicing the windows. We had to fill this in with wood putty. You can also see the new weather stripping here, which helps direct the window as we open and close it.

And that's pretty much it. It was difficult getting good pictures of the finished window because the changes are so small, but you get the idea. There are certain things which required John to work outside in the cold with a fancy haz mat suit on and everything - like when dealing with the old paint. And re-glazing the glass is a whole other topic John could go on and on about, but we'll leave that for some other day. Like next year when we rebuild our savings and get 3 more windows done!

Happy Thanksgiving, by the way!