In case you were wondering.

(wink)

I got to put my rope skills to good use replacing one of the sash cords on my window.

The weights were neatly tucked away in their pocket. The remaining old sash cord was still attached to the fallen weight.

It’s really important to tie this specific knot when you’re putting new sash cord on a weight. It won’t slip over time and come undone. It only gets tighter.

Here’s what a new bundle of sash cord looks like. My windows take medium gauge but there is lighter gauge too. Remember that if you have rounded pulleys you must use rope and if your pulleys have a flat rolling surface, you can use chains.

Now, my original plan was to fish the end of the rope down through the pulley, let it drop down into the weight cavity, and tie it onto the weight. But when I tried that the end of the cord kept getting caught on some of the plaster keys and I couldn’t force it down the cavity far enough to grab it. I decided to use a snake to pull it up from below because that would give me a firmer guide.

Here’s my wiring snake with a bit of yarn tied on the end that I would attach to the end of the sash cord.

Yet another tricky thing about this project was that the pulley had a slope on the inside. It didn’t just open through to the weight cavity, it had an extended piece that sloped down in the same direction as the rope would go, presumably to help prevent drafts coming in around the rope. Unfortunately, this made the hole JUST the right size for the rope and nothing more. It was a tight squeeze but I got the snake through and the end of the sash cord fit just right.

I measured it to be about the same length as the one next to it and tied it off. I left some extra on the end so I’ll have something to work with if the knot needs to be adjusted when I put the sash back in.

Hmmm… now what else can I tie with sash cord?

I wanted to make sure I removed all the paint from the inside of the parting bead because the moving window sashes would eventually break away the paint and release lead into the home in years to come. I was surprised how much I had missed when I finally pulled out my mirror to take a look.

One more round of chemical stripping, coming right up!

In the case of my window restoration project I kept running into setbacks with the hardware and the fact that I got bored sanding by hand. I decided I’d just have to suck it up about the sanding but the hardware was a tougher problem.

Like everything else in our house that shouldn’t have been painted the window hardware was all painted over. I used the handy dandy ammonia trick as seen in this post but the paint was hard to get out of the moving parts.

I soaked them too long and they rusted.

So I got hung up on how to fix the hardware. Finally, I just said, “You know what? I can get new hardware that looks like old hardware for the same amount as it would take to restore the old hardware.” Block dissolved.

Don’t worry, preservationists, I’m going to pack the old hardware away for any future rehabbers who want to take on the task. But as I looked through the rest of the hardware on the windows around my house, I noticed a few have missing pieces anyway. I might as well make them all match.

So with that block out of the way I continued working on the window frame I’m prepping.

I wanted to make sure and remove all the lead paint from the areas that will have moving parts, so I used Zinsser 5-layer chemical strip and then sanded the last bits of residue off. I followed each pass with the sandpaper with a wipe down with a wet cloth so the dust wouldn’t be airborne. I wore a mask and dusted the rest of the room with a damp cloth afterward too.

The frames are looking pretty good now!

Next up: replacing a broken sash cord and the benefits of being a girl home rehabber!

I successfully glazed three large single pane windows with no problems. But put a single five light window in front of me and something’s bound to go awry.

Here’s the window sash, all prepped and ready to go.

Linseed oil… good, good…

Putty worms, sticking nicely…

Lovely bed of putty for the pane of glass…

First pane goes in, so far so good…

Time for the second pane…

And… D’OH!

There was hairline crack in the glass and when I pushed it into the putty it broke.

Sadness…

The good news, though, is that now I’ll get to take a trip to Miller’s and show you their cool glass cutting machine! I’ll try and take a video to show you. It’s just the coolest thing!

Check back again soon for more progress!

In my last post (A Spa for Window Sashes) I stained the window sashes and prepped them to start putting the glass panes back in. That process is called glazing, hence my stupid donut joke.

But really, glazed donuts are my favorite.

To further prep the wood I applied a 50/50 mix of linseed oil and mineral spirits.

Only mix up as much as you’re going to use at a time. I used an old candy bucket.

Linseed oil something I wasn’t familiar with until recently. But I’ve since learned that it is sort of a natural primer for wood. It helps seal the wood cells and strengthen the surface of the wood a bit. It adds a slightly golden color to raw wood, and once the excess is wiped down and absorbed leaves a nice natural surface. Because it is a natural oil, it may need reapplication on exposed surfaces and is not recommended for use on things like chairs. Sitting on it might let it absorb into clothes.

It’s the ideal product to use on certain parts of a window because it helps create a seal against moisture and allows moving edges of a window to slide against the frame without gumming up like paint would. Additionally, linseed oil is one of the components of glazing putty and it’s the part that helps it oxidize and harden.

I applied a thin coat of linseed oil/mineral spirits to the inside of the sash where the putty would go. I let it soak in for about five minutes and then wiped off the excess that hadn’t been absorbed by the wood. I went ahead and applied it to the whole window sash. It can be primed over again later with oil based sealant and I figured it would help condition the wood in the meantime. (The sash looks uneven and blotchy because I only stained the side that would face inward. The outside is going to be painted with white oil based primer so I didn’t bother staining it.)

Now I have to confess to a part of this process I did against the advice of all the experts I’ve talked to. Everyone I’ve spoken to has said that the Dap 33 brand of glazing compound is no good. (“Dap is crap!” is how Bob Yapp put it at his workshop.) But Dap is inexpensive and easily available. I’m using Dap on my project, but I am doing so with the understanding that 1) my windows will be protected behind very good quality storm windows, and 2) I’m going to take great care to make sure the remaining sealing steps get done really well to make the best seal possible. I’m fully aware that the experts recommend a product by Abatron, and if I had my way, I’d do every last thing according to the experts. This is one of those corners I’m going to have to cut, but hopefully I can do it with a little care so that the results won’t be drastically different from the good stuff.

When I bought my first can of Dap, I opened it up and pulled out a golf ball sized wad of it. Some of the oil had separated out of it, so I started kneading it to reincorporate it. But it was so sticky it soon coated my hands and was impossible to work with. In frustration I scraped off what I could and dunked my hands in a small can of mineral spirits to wash it off.

When I was a kid my dad was a baker. I remembered that when he was showing me how to knead bread that was too sticky, he floured his hands first and worked some of the flour into the dough until it was the right consistency. I read somewhere that plaster dust could be added to glazing compound to make it more workable, so I took a tip from the bakery and dusted my hands and my worktable with some plaster patching compound.

With my hands coated with plaster dust, the glazing compound worked into a soft, malleable ball.

I kept a small cup full of plaster dust handy as I worked and re-dusted my hands any time the glazing got too sticky. It made the whole job so much easier.

The first step in setting the glass back in a window is to lay a nice soft bed for it. To do this I pulled a quarter sized ball of glazing putty, rolled it out into a worm, and smooshed it into the rabbet. (That’s another cool word I learned! The notched out ledge where the glass will rest is called the rabbet.)

On a large single pane window, the glass actually slides into a slot at the top of the sash and then rests on the other three rabbeted sides. To create a good seal and give the glass an evenly cushioned set, I squeezed some putty into the slot where the top of the glass would go. I also took care to squeeze putty firmly into the corner.

Here you can see putty going into the slot and squeezed in along the rabbet.

All the sides of the sash had putty now, so it was time to set the glass in its nice soft bed.

It’s a little hard to see in this next photo, but I put the top edge of the glass into the slot at the top first and pushed it in hard enough to squish some of the putty out and around the edge of the glass. That gave enough clearance to get the bottom of the glass past the edge of the sash.

Here’s the other corner of the top. You can see the glass is snugly in the slot and putty is squishing out around it.

As I set the rest of the glass down gently into the putty I pressed firmly but carefully to get a good seal between the front of the glass and the front of the window. A lot of putty will squish out, but don’t worry, that will get trimmed off later and you can most likely reuse it on the next window.

Now at the glass was evenly set in the bed of putty, it was time to put in the glazing points. You’ll remember from a previous post that glazing points are little metal pieces that hold the glass in place while you’re glazing. They come in two common shapes: triangles, which require a special application gun, and tabbed points, which can be applied using a screwdriver or putty knife. I found both kinds when I was disassembling my windows and I bought the tabbed kind.

With a rocking motion, I wiggled glazing points into the wood about 8 inches apart on the three sides of the window that weren’t the slotted side.

Next I repeated the part where I made a ball of putty, rolled it out into a slightly fatter worm, and smooshed it into the groove around the window. Don’t be afraid of putting too much putty on. It’s better to have too much than too little and the excess will get removed as you use your putty knife like I’m going to show you.

I used a bent knife because it’s easier to get the 45 degree angle that allowed me to put enough pressure on the putty to really get it squeezed in tightly. Once I had a good thick layer of putty on, I pressed my knife into it an inch at a time, squeezing and compacting it into the crevice between the wood and the glass.

The excess putty collected on the back of my knife. I took that off and made a ball of it to continue using it as I went around the rest of the window.

All that pressing with the knife left a bumpy pattern.

So I turned my knife the long way and ran it down the edge at a 45 degree angle to smooth the surface and remove more excess putty.

I carefully removed the line of excess that got squeezed off the edge.

And voila! I had a lovely straight sealed edge. It looks a little messy because I still hadn’t scraped the excess off the other side yet.

I had to smooth the corners down with my fingers. The goal is to make sure there aren’t any cracks or pockets where water can get trapped.

When I was finished with all the sides I stood the window up and scraped the excess putty that got squeezed through the front.

Ta-da! The finished product. Well, at least finished with glazing.

Now to put the finished sashes in a warm dry room and wait a couple of weeks. One way Dap is inferior to other glazing compounds is that it takes a really long time to harden a skin. Since linseed oil is supposed to help it oxidize, I’ll brush a thin layer of it over the glazing. Apparently, it can take four weeks or more to really harden, though I’ve heard of instances where months after glazing, it was still rather soft. Painting over the glazing will slow down the hardening, so I’ll put off that part as long as I can.

I’ll post some more pictures soon of the 5-light sashes. The process is pretty much the same, minus the slot at the top. A bit more time consuming. But now that I’ve got the hang of it, it’s all going much faster. Can’t wait to put these beautiful windows back in the frames!

I sanded them….

And they looked brand new!

It was time to start staining them. With the collection of substances I had to wipe on and wipe off I felt like I was running some kind of window sash spa. Cleaners, moisturizers, colors… maybe I was just wishing I could be at a spa myself. Anyway, I first wiped the sashes down with mineral spirits, then used Pre-Stain wood conditioner. The Pre-Stain is optional, but recommended for softer woods. My windows are some kind of fir or pine, so definitely a soft wood. Then I used the Red Oak color of Minwax wood stain to match my existing woodwork.

Here they are with the Pre-Stain:

Here’s what it looked like mid-staining:

I laid them out on plastic while I waited the 15 minutes for the stain to soak in.

Here are the first sashes stained:

Here are some stained and some not yet stained:

And all six sashes stained:

Next up: Replacing the glass! Check back soon and we’ll get to glazing!

I hope to do a more full-length post about Shull’s, but in case anyone needs to know, here are the basics: Shull’s is a furniture refinishing business in Valley Junction and they are the go-to place for having large things stripped of paint quickly and easily. From what I understand they have a large tank of chemicals and they submerge items to have the paint stripped off. Apparently they can do whole doors, and possibly larger items. Anyway, they had six sashes done for me within a day or so for about $130. For those items you just don’t want to spend the time stripping by hand, or for delicate pieces that need to have the paint soaked free, Shull’s is the place to go. (515) 255-9449

I got them back and my next step would be to cut a slot on each side of the sashes for the weatherstripping to fit into. For that I needed a router with a 5/32″ slotting bit. A Des Moines Rehabbers Club member was kind enough to loan me his plunge router and bit. Now, I LOVE power tools and I’m always excited to get my hands on a new one. This one was particularly fun and I was reluctant to give it back. I may just have to buy myself one someday and find things to use it on.

Here’s what the 5/32″ slotting bit looks like:

We had lots of fun at the Rehabbers Club Meeting demonstrating how to cut the slots for the weatherstripping.

And here are some pictures of how the slot looks. (Remember, the letters I etched in the sides are how I will match the sashes up to their original frames and panes of glass when I put them all back together.)

Don’t make the mistake I made here. In this next photo you can see I clamped the window on the side I had cut. I found out later the clamp had cracked the sash a little. I repaired it and all was well, but I learned my lesson. Only clamp the solid top and bottom. And use a rag so the clamp doesn’t bite into the wood.

I also damaged one of the muntins (that’s the wood between the small panes in an upper sash) when I was removing the glazing so I did a quick glue and clamp to repair that.

Here are my two damaged sashes waiting for the glue to set. The bottle of Citristrip is acting as a weight clamp for one of the sashes.

Now that the sashes were cut and repaired it was time to finish removing the remaining paint and varnish, give them a good sanding, and prepare them to be reglazed. Check back in my next post to see those steps.

If you’d like to take a walk down memory lane and see the very beginning of the process, here are two posts from 2008 that show how to take out the windows and some explanation about what you’ll find when you do.

http://www.ournewoldhouse.com/windows-to-the-soul/

http://www.ournewoldhouse.com/my-windows-the-lost-images/

So I already had the sashes out of the frames. The glazing on my windows is all dried and crumbling, so the first step I need to take is to remove all that old gunk and take the panes of glass out. But my first step before THAT (This is how my brain does these projects, by the way. If my brain were a book it would have a dozen of those pages in front that were numbered with lower case roman numerals.) was to come up with a labeling system for the window panes I was about to remove. My previous system of a scrap of masking tape was not going to cut it. These window panes were precisely cut and fit to these frames and getting them mixed up and out of order would make putting them back impossible.

So I labeled each window sash and etched the label into the hidden side of the sash with my Dremel tool. I’ll explain later why I etched it and didn’t just pencil or marker it.

“E” means east and “R” means right. This is the right hand window of the east wall in my front bedroom. Since I’m doing one room at a time, that’s enough labeling.

Then I needed to match up the panes of glass to the window and mark which part of the frame they’d go into. For that I used a Sharpie.

Ok, I confess. I didn’t think of labeling the panes until after I’d already taken them out. But I’m trying to help YOU with this blog, so do as I say not as I did. Cool? Cool.

So, back to the glazing removal.

With just a screwdriver and an occasional tap with a rubber mallet the stuff pops right off.

Here’s a corner of the window were the glazing has been removed.

Some of the glazing wasn’t quite as old. It seems someone had done some repairs at some point. Pretty mediocre if you ask me, but better than nothing I guess.

This stuff didn’t chip away quite as easily. It was kind of gummy and hard to crumble with a screwdriver.

That’s okay! That just means it’s time for a new tool! I used my Dremel with a coarse sandpaper bit to grind the stuff out. (Don’t forget to put on your mask BEFORE you get a faceful of airborne white powder.)

Once I had the old glazing chipped out, I removed these little metal tabs that hold the glass in place. I can’t remember what they’re called, so if anybody reading this knows, would you please comment and let me know? These aren’t meant to hold the glass in, really, they’re just meant to hold it steady with even spacing while the glazing is applied. It’s the glazing that holds the glass in and seals up the cracks around the edges.

With some gentle pressure underneath and a little wiggling, the panes of glass popped out. So far in my first batch of windows, I’ve only lost one of the small panes. It was very brittle, a goner from the start, there was nothing we could do. But the rest came out fine! See?

Also, check out the cool edge on this piece. It was cut this way a hundred years ago!

So there ya go! A window sash minus the glass. I initially intended to strip these using the heat gun and Citristrip, but after doing one I decided to just take the glass-free sashes to a local place and have them dunk-stripped. I’ll let know know where and how it goes once I do that.

Here’s one I started stripping with the heat gun:

A couple of the sashes ready to go to the dunk-stripper:

And the panes ready to be put back in later:

I took the hardware off the sashes too. They’ll get stripped in ammonia and re-painted to match the door hardware in the rest of the house.

Phew! This has been a big post! That’s all for now! Check back soon for more updates!

One thing Doug and I both agreed on was that measuring and lining everything up as squarely as possible is very important, but that when working with old houses, you just get a knack for eyeballing if something needs to be shaved down on one side or built a little less than square from the beginning. A perfectionist will have some serious personal growth to accomplish if they ever want to fix up an old house because inevitably one side of a window will need to be a millimeter wider than the other, or the bottom of a door will have to be shaved to fit the slanted floor it closes over. This is where the exact science of construction meets the artistry of craftsmanship. Only by finding balance between the two will you have a happy home renovating experience.

In Doug’s case, he had to bore holes on each side deep enough to let the sash cord knot sink into without blocking the channel through which the metal weatherizing rail would slide. This took a bit of trial and error, but he eventually figured out just the right depth.

He carved out the channel for the sash cord with a curved chisel. (I helped on this one.)

So, here’s one end of the sash with the hole and channel for the sash cord. If you look closely at the bottom you can see that the sash has been slotted for the weatherizing rail too.

Unfortunately I didn’t take good pictures of both of the sashes, but here’s the original sash:

And here’s the reproduction Doug built:

When we put the newly constructed sash into the window frame we realized that the bottom of the sash was not slanted to meet the sill. Window sills are slanted at about a 10 degree angle to allow water to run toward the outside of the house. The bottom of our sash was square so it didn’t allow the meeting rails to fit level when the sashes were closed. Doug shaved off one corner of the bottom of the sash to match the angle of the sill better.

With that little extra effort the new sash fit in perfectly and after we had it installed you couldn’t tell by looking at it that the bottom sash was brand new and the top sash was 100 years old.

Check back next time and I’ll take you on a tour of Doug’s cool old farmhouse!

Bob showed us a system of adding metal rails for the original wood sashes to run on that blocked air from coming around the sides of the sashes and helped the sashes open and close more smoothly.

Doug Burnett of Burnett Realty has started using the system on the windows in a 1910 farmhouse near Runnells and since I was just about to start my window project, he offered to let me come see how he’d done it and gave me some tips for how to put Bob Yapp’s suggestions into practice.

One of the things he showed me was that a circular saw could be used to make the slots for the metal rails. He used a table saw.

One modification Doug made to Bob’s plan was in his measurement for the top sash. Because the wheel for the sash cord is in the way, he couldn’t put the rail all the way to the top. But with stops on both sides of the sash, he wasn’t concerned about any cold air getting through at that spot. He measured the rail to start just below the wheel and end an inch below the bottom of the sash.

After he’d cut the length, he lopped off the corners to make them less sharp and more attractive.

One side of the rails is installed with a staple gun (the kind that’s like a nail gun run off an air compressor) like so:

The other side is installed with screws so it can be removed later if needed.

Doug drilled pilot holes into the strips between the corrugated ridges. He used a drill bit that was larger than needed to accommodate the shaft of the screw so that the screw head has room to sink into the strip and not catch on the sash as it slides up and down the rail. Drilling through the strip left some pretty bad burrs on the back of the strip, which would make it hard to slide the strip into place with the sash, so he used a belt sander to remove the burrs and smooth the back of the strips. A steel file or a rasp would work for this too.

These are the screws he used (took this picture so I’d know which screws to pick out at the hardware store):

Doug also replaced some of the sash cord.

We successfully installed the upper and lower sashes with the steel rails and there was much rejoicing. Mostly we ate cookies.

Check back with my next post to see how we prepped a newly constructed sash to be fitted for sash ropes and shaved down the bottom side of the sash to meet the angle of the sill. There’s much more to come!