Our New Old House

I’ve been making slow but steady progress with stripping the paint off the woodwork in the front bedroom. Here are some pictures.

Before:

During:

After:

Before:

During:

After:

Scratch is impressed.

My arms were really sore from my yoga class this week so I didn’t so a lot of “up high” work in the front bedroom, though I did heat gun off some more paint from the window frames.  They’re pretty much ready for a coat of Citri-Strip to take off the varnish that’s left.  I cleaned up the room a bit, swept out the window sills, swept the floor, organized my tools, and prepared for the next day’s work.  Every little bit helps, I keep telling myself.

[tags]woodwork, bedroom, windows[/tags]

I forgot to upload these photos yesterday. Here are some more pictures of my windows in the front bedroom as I’m removing them.

One thing I learned is that because I need to break the stops between the sashes to get them out, I need to access them from the side. Luckily, there are access holes to get to the weights and these allow me to access the sides of the stops too.

Here are the weights. Notice the unusual knot used to tie them on. Someone told me this knot was commonly used for window weights. I’ve seen it in two different houses so far.

Here are the window frames after I removed the sashes. It was very weird having gaping holes in the side of my house, so I took a lot of pictures of how that looked before I put the storm windows back on.

And I took a few at night so you could see the room itself and not just the light from outside.

So here’s my nice stack of windows ready to be refurbished.

Mark that task off my list!

[tags]bedroom, windows, photos, woodwork[/tags]

Spring is here, people! That means I get to work on my windows!

My goal for the windows is to take them apart, reglaze them, refinish the wood, and put them back together better than ever.

Here I am with my first window to dismantle.

I took off the front stop and then the lower sash came right out.

The stop between the two sashes was a lot harder to get out. It’s not just nailed onto the frame. It is inserted into the frame about half an inch. I’m going to have to break the stop and then insert a new one when I put it back together.

Once I got that stop out I was able to lower the top sash to take it out too. The top sashes were all terribly painted shut and I spent a good 20 minutes tapping a putty knife into the cracks around the edges to loosen the paint.

Here are the ropes for the weights. Someone must have replaced these sometime in the recent past because they’re in great condition.

Now with the sashes out, there was a giant hole in my house!

Here are the windows waiting to be restored. I need to finish stripping the paint off the frames before I start working on these.

I made sure to label each one so I know where to put them back when they’re done.

I took more pictures but I guess they haven’t ended up on my Flickr account yet. All the windows are out of the front bedroom now, though, and I’m working on stripping the last of the paint off the window frames.

[tags]bedroom, windows, paint, woodwork, photos[/tags]

This weekend I stripped another door.

Today I put another coat of polyurethane on the test door. It’s looking so cool!

Then I worked the rest of the night on the front bedroom. No pictures yet because darn it, after all that work it doesn’t look like I did much. But I kept heat gunning the paint off the window frames and baseboards, then I applied Citristrip to the front window frames to take off what was left of the paint and the excess varnish. It needs another round.

It feels like I’m getting nowhere right now, but I’m sure I’ll feel better in the morning. My arm’s just sore from all that scraping.

[tags]varnish, woodwork, heat gun, Citristrip, paint removal[/tags]