This circa 1860 cottage still has its original Victorian windows. Having spent many months going down the impossible task pursuing replacement windows for this little cottage because they looked 'too—far—gone', we decided the only solution was to tackle a full blown restoration on them. Having never done this before, we researched the options and I communicated with a few window restorers who shared helpful tips. Daunting...Yes! Rewarding...Absolutely!!!
A heat gun was certainly a good investment in the repair process of these windows
We tried valiantly to count how many layers of paint we could find on the timber — one piece we got to 15
The top section of the old Victorian windows is a fixed window, so only the bottom slides up, with no ropes or pulleys, just brute force and hopefully the window didn't bind to the window frame — which of course they did, every time! So we wanted to fix that and make them user-friendly.
Cannot believe that some souls would have firstly joined six pieces of glass to fill the window space and secondly to put all of them in with hot glue. Hot glue is just the WORST thing to remove! You need to heat it up to soften it and then it just turns into sticky chewing gum. Unbelievable!!!
As you can see here, there are sections of the window that have never seen paint and other parts where the paint is about ½" thick. We had to remove the timber architrave on the inside to access the window removal.
Out it comes...
Once pane of glass replaced up the top and the other one still to wrestle with.
What about a cardboard window for the night! Not great security, but kept the winter chill out a little. Just as well we live in an honest community with zero crime here.
The window now removed, repaired, sanded, painted with new putty needing to dry.
Window all done — waiting for putty to dry over a few weeks and then painting will be done
Even though the final painting is not complete — white windows are looking way better
Pretty as a picture...
https://piccolorose.wixsite.com/nest
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