How to Restore a Historic Wooden Window - Step by Step

hey guys brent holt build show two hours ago this was painted shut and a candidate for replacement right it didn't work it was an old window it was kind of rattly right now we have a a working window both upper and lower sash are operable okay in about two hours right so this is totally a project that any homeowner or any craftsman or any handyman can do to get your windows working again to get them so they can last another hundred years stay tuned [Music] we're here in fort worth on a beautiful arts and crafts little bungalow street this is a 1920s 1930s neighborhood okay now this is part two of the windows series in the shop last time we talked about uh why we save windows what the math is what the science is behind the restoration now today we're out here and we're going to actually restore a window on this house but first before i do that i want to show you this neighborhood in this street next door this 1323 is a beautiful example of an arts and crafts house right that deep front porch that column detail the low pitched roof the overhanging eaves all great arts and crafts details the windows on this house actually were changed okay they're six over six now they probably were six over one now how do i know that well windows tend to be one of the most defining architectural features of a house so when you change them when you mess them up okay the other piece of why we started to save our historic windows is because that orientation that style is representative okay it is it is a defining character now look at this little house here now this is a much simpler house right this is a more of a workman's house that was maybe his boss right so this is a little bit simpler house you'll see that we've got two fixed windows on either side okay and then a double hung window in the middle with the transom over top okay if you can see on the other side of this bush here okay they've just got a sheet of glass okay so at some point they and we know as we look at this house they change the windows okay not all of them okay on the north side of the house they still have the original double hung windows which are a six over one but when you go down this side of the house on the other side of that door they're one over one i think okay they're not nearly as beautiful okay they're not nearly as distinctive and so one of the reasons we keep historic windows is because they help define the architecture of the house now we're going to restore these windows today we're actually going to restore this window right here i'm trying to help you realize a how easy it is to restore these windows now i think what happened is is that they changed these windows to one over one windows because they didn't didn't open anymore much like these don't open okay i'm going to show you how easy it is to get these working again what we're going to do is we're going to take out this upper sash we're going to take out this lower sash we're gonna work on them right here now you can see that this glazing is just is just breaking apart right okay we're gonna fix the these panes right here now i've looked on the inside and there it's all the wavy glass okay so we want to save that as much as possible we're going to reglaze this window okay we're going to we're going to get it working again you can see that it's been painted shut okay on the outside as well as the inside this wood is really sound though okay there's a little bit of chip paint right there okay and you can hear the glass rattling a little bit we're gonna stop that rattle as well okay these windows are fixed now in a nicer house possibly these were casement windows and these would have opened and closed but i've already looked at them the inside they're fixed we've got a really pretty transom light above okay so a real distinctive window a real character defining window we want to keep this right a number of reasons why we keep the windows architecturally and distinctively now let's get this thing working okay guys so now i'm inside right and sometimes you see there's the original windows in the front they've been covered up with these plantation shutters right now that's a what a 1890s early 2000s thing where these are really popular they're not as popular today i've already popped out one side okay so one i i'm i'm showing you the taking out of the shutters because sometimes you can get flustered right by how do i i don't even know where to start right and so i've actually already taken off one side i'm going to show you taking off the other side because i want you to i want to walk you through this whole thing and don't want you to walk up to your window and go well i don't know how to do it now i got a shutter in my way so what we've got is we've got just two screws right here holding holding this this uh this thing they're they're on hinges right so i'm gonna take the screws out of the hinges i'm gonna pull the shutter off first thing i'm gonna do almost to my window but i've got these little pieces here that are holding this up now what's happened is is they have nailed these in with finish nails so i'm actually going to come and start prying this off right the first thing you have to do is you i need you to get a utility knife because your utility knife is what's going to help you cut out these pieces now these weren't really cocked in and your utility knife is cutting the caulk okay and what we'll especially see that a little bit later when we're when we're dealing with the window but you see that i've just got a five-way okay i've got a number of different types of of wrenches here and pry bars right all different sizes and thicknesses okay so the five way is great it actually has something you can hammer on the back it's a real you know handy tool but i'm going to just try with a number of different pry bars to see where my nails are you can hear it kind of the paint's popping is what you're hearing those nails moving a little bit but i'm just very carefully going to pry this off okay now what what i'll do here is i'll get a little snip all right and i'll cut this loose with my snips all right and essentially all it is is they've got this flat little lattice piece here and it fits tight and then they shot this piece on and it this is what this screws to i'm just going to work around this window get these things out and then we'll get to the window caulk can really be can cause your wood to splinter if you don't cut your line you can really end up doing some damage as far as ripping your wood apart [Music] this is a real handy tool if you don't have one you need to get one okay it allows you to really remove nails very effectively there's no head on some of these trim nails and so you have to actually pry them out in a snip like this is very handy now the other reason i'm pulling these out because i'm also about to pull out these stops okay and if these are in there they're just going to make pulling my stop out harder let's pretend right that that you didn't have that now we're just back to our window it's very simple i don't remember when we looked at in the shop but it's a very simple system my weights are in here okay it's called a weight pocket they're also behind this molding this molding and this molding so when you have an historic window that has a weight pocket you have a wide mole okay now it's going to be very easy i'm going to pop this off and we're actually going to be able to see our weight pocket in here i'm going to come in with my pry bar i'm going to get a thin pry bar here hammer just going to start at the bottom slowly work my way up [Music] so i'm just slowly doing this this is not something where you just get in a hurry i'm just going to slowly pry this down i'm going to get my hammer and i can slowly start just kind of pulling like this okay you can see the weights and pulleys inside here a few cobwebs right but there's your weight okay hanging on this pulley right which is right here in this rope so that's moving my window up and down now what's happened is someone's painted these ropes over time and now they're kind of stiff right so don't paint your ropes when you paint your windows and all i'm going to do is i'm going to loosen this window realize that it's pretty easy to get these windows working again if your glazing is in good shape right all you have to do is pop the paint loose okay which is what i'm going to do next right so so far all i've done is taken off the shutter and now i'm cutting paint lines okay so i'm going to cut this paint line uh that one's not even painted shut i'm going to cut this paint line okay now i know that it was pretty and you can see i'm being pretty rough but you can see i'm already moving it did you hear that okay now what i'm going to do is i'm going to take my 5-way my hammer i'm going to go outside i'm going to pop those lines loose because i know i was tight on the outside i know it was painted shut so come on outside so now we're on the outside of the window and i know that and you can see these lines right it's completely painted shut it's probably cocked and painted shut right so i'm going to come in here and all i'm going to do is i'm just going to take my five way and i'm breaking that line right sometimes that paint gets all crusty and if it's been painted over five six times right then it gets pretty crusty like this but there you can see that it's already breaking loose got a lot of paint right there i realized that because of this mole cover okay if i wanted i could take if i had something in front of this window if i had something i didn't want to mess up i could work on those weights from the outside too okay so this mole cover i can't in there and there of course this is a fixed sash but i can take this middle mold cover off i'm not going to i've already done it from the inside [Music] i fixed it from the outside just going to start kind of pulling it around if i wanted to that's it i just wanted my windows working i would stop right if my glazing wasn't in bad shape we're actually going to go farther but once you're done if you want to start waxing these things up if you just took some car wax and wiped on this thing you could get this thing moving very very smoothly and easily after you move it up and down a few times now what i'm looking at here too is i'm noticing these windows were weather stripped there's a number of different kinds of weather stripping we can use this is a sprung bronze weatherstrip which is okay which is not bad there's another type of weatherstrip we'll talk about but there's that window let me get the top window popped in now these on the inside haven't been cocked in so they don't require quite as much work so i got this one going all right and i'll do the same thing i'll pop it up and down and get it going i've got a broken piece of glass in here we'll show you how to fix that but i've got the window working right all it was was paint holding this thing shut and we've got a great working window now because we're going to take both sash out i'm going to show you how to do that essentially what's happening here is we have a stop this is a decorative stop and then we have a parting stop okay it's called a parting stop because it parts it keeps the upper and lower sash separate and then on the outside it's called a blind stop and that what's that's what builds the track right that these sash go up and down in all i have to do is remove this stop remove that stop and both sash come out so i don't have to tear down a whole window i don't have to i only have to do one side in fact i'll probably do this side since i took the mold cover off that way i only have to paint and fix one side when i put this back first thing is always is the cutting the line you can see that wasn't much of a line there but there is that's what helps us typically there aren't a lot of nails in these things this one has one there one short one there all right there's not many nails in this thing the other thing to notice is that there's see what the what the all the the gunk and the caulk and the paint and stuff over the years do but we've actually got a really pretty profile here this would be the this is actually a stop that we like to use a lot in our shop because it has a little bead detail in there you can see that a little what this does is it creates a shadow line so then that goes back on there creates a real pretty shadow line this is a really pretty stop and we like to use it quite a bit now because i've taken that stop out all this thing just moves right out okay because that stop was creating that track right so now what i have is i pull my sash cord out now i don't have to worry about this but in the past i have let go of a sash cord like this and it's gone whoop and down into the pocket then i have to open the wall cover up to go get chase my weight but this case um it can sit down at the ground because there's a knot tied in it so basically what there is is there's a knot tied in the end with a nail okay and what that does is that grows in the edge of this sash and nails in there because we've had it happen before when we didn't use nails but that nail is very helpful for holding that sash cord into the window do the same thing on the other side just pull that out i've got my sash right and we'll go work on this side let me pull the upper sash and then we'll go work on them and get them working again now i said there was a parting stop so the next piece of this thing is is what's called a parting stop and that's what this piece is now i'm pulling on it and you can see that it's kind of moving since i already kind of popped that that stuff loose this is actually going to come apart and i'm doing this with my hands i'm just grabbing it moving back and forth you can get a pair of pliers if you want i don't have one i'm just going to cut this paint loose at the bottom okay and i'm just gonna get this loose okay again there's not many nails in here the other thing that someone did originally is they put in a little stop here to stop the airflow coming through here so that there's actually a little piece of felt right there that's a pretty cool detail historic detail that is not typical what i'm trying to do is get this out i may have to pull it all the way down so i can get it so i can get it out from the top and you can see i'm just going to be pretty rough with this thing and what's happening is i've got so much and stuff in this track you can see all the gunk i've gotten here now it's kind of caked up and that's what's keeping my sash from coming down again it's just cutting the paint line break this loose these things are kind of brittle i can feel that it's already broken in there and try to get my real thin pry bar coming from the top see if i can't get it out so you can see that this thing is so brittle we're going to have to put some glue on this thing when we put it back together so my parting stop which is this piece it's a half inch by three quarter okay this was especially brittle and you can see the the wood this is long leaf pine right and it just it just fell apart so we're gonna get another piece of parting stop but party stuff is piece of top you can make okay really literally it's a half inch by three quarters of an inch and it fits in this groove so you'll see how easy that goes back in now that that parting stop is out i can just pull this upper sash just catching on the weather stripping and again same thing [Music] now that is some really brittle wood that is i mean it's just almost stuck to that and that's not typical right we can look at the frame here and here's here's where my stop goes right here's where my sash slides parting stop outside sash slides and then blind stop okay so there's your tracks right you never paint the closed in section there you paint really can cause these windows to stick weatherstripping we'll talk about that real quick there are a number of different types this is the kind we prefer it's called a it's called a grooved weather stripping and it actually sits right here okay and you cut a groove in your in your sash and it sits like right here right and your sash slides up and down in there okay it stops the air infiltration that can happen sometimes very effective piece both work we just like the grooved weather stripping better there's also a j mold weatherstripping which is like this which goes between the sash which goes in the check rail upper sash lower sash right this sits right there and locks the the two check rails together so there's a number of different types of weatherstripping you can use it'll make your windows more efficient but you'll see from the things we're about to do to this sash how to keep it from feeling like it's just leaking air right part of it's weather stripping part of it is how the sash the glass is put in the sash and we'll fix that right now we've now got the sash out on the table we're going to work on them on a table like this the great thing to me about winter restoration especially for homeowners even for businesses even for guys who want to get in the window restoration business there's not a lot of tools right there's not a lot of heavy equipment that so the barrier enters pretty low i've got some putty knives wire brush some cotton sash cord gun right you saw my knife on the inside the five-way right a hammer right so not a lot of high-tech tools here right so and and that makes sense right because we're actually working on something before the era of power tools okay so a couple things in observation one it took a little bit longer to get that sash out because that parting stop was just so brittle okay and looking at the wood we've got a combination of woods which is fairly typical in that the the frame is built in longleaf pine the sash are built in cypress okay now i know that just because i've worked on windows for a long time but remember back in the turn of the century even into the 19 up into the 1940s glazers and glazer unions would uh be building sash and would be setting glass in frames so it isn't unlikely that the frames were built and then the sash were brought by somebody else they typically made the frames out of longleaf pine because it was such a strong hardwood and then they used cypress even white pine even fur sometimes as the sash material we're going to now fix and work on this window all i'm going to do now you see and you may have seen me break this this this piece of glass broke right you can see it kind of falling apart there we're going to repair this piece of glass i actually got an old sash and so we're going to actually put wavy glass back in there what i'm going to do is i'm just going to show you how to take the glazing out of these things sometimes you have glazing that's actually already falling out probably a quarter of the glazing in this thing is ready to just is ready to just lift out right and very easily with a putty knife i was able to start getting this getting this loose and you can kind of see some of that now all i'm going to do is and a six over one will take me a little bit longer because there's six panes here but all i'm going to do is i'm going to get my putting knives right and i'm going to start picking this stuff out now so if if i drew a section of my right this is my profile okay that's that's my sash that's this piece right here the glass is fitting right in here so my eighth inch piece of glass is coming right across there that's the glass now what's happening is is the putty that i'm taking out is right here okay and it's loose but what's happened over the over time is as it gets painted this paint runs up onto the glass and you can see some of that right there right you can see where that glass is run over you can see it right here right where that paints run over just kind of a sloppy paint job what that means is that when you're trying to look through your sash right right i'm actually seeing that paint line right here and it looks ugly okay so what happens is is that typically what a three quarter inch or 5 8 inch mutton bar which is what this piece is called okay turns into a one inch or inch and a quarter right it just ends up getting fat so one of the perks of fixing your windows is you're going to be able to clean a lot of that up there's a couple different things here i brought some different putty knives right so i've got a number of different putty knives here what you want is you want a stiff putty knife now i can continue to use my five way to pick this out in fact this little pick piece of this five way is actually really good for getting in here and picking this glazing out but what you'll find that when we're when we're when we start to glaze we do not want a soft putty knife now you can kind of see how how flexible that is now this is that's too flexible that's nice and stiff okay and we're going to need a real stiff one this is what they call actually a glazing putty knife and it's very stiff and we'll we'll play with both of those as we re re-glaze our window but for now for the next 20 minutes i'm going to be cleaning this window cleaning the glazing out cleaning the stuff out and getting it ready to reglaze really what i'm doing is i'm getting only the loose glazing that's in here okay i'm not going to work on getting all the glazing out of here now there's a reason why and this is this sometimes this glazing can get as hard as concrete okay now our company when we do these large restoration projects we'll take the sash out sometimes they'll be abated if there's lead-based paint but other times we'll just get them dipped and stripped okay and so all the glazing goes away all the paint goes away now that's a much easier thing to do when you're doing you know 800 windows right when you're doing one or two and you're a homeowner and you're working at your house or you're just doing a few windows at a time i totally think that there's nothing wrong with coming in cleaning these windows up and then re-glazing them okay and we'll just talk about that once i get it cleaned out but i'm not going to in this video completely clean these windows get them you know sew all the glasses out and then redo it i'm going to just take out the glazing that's bad because uh that's really what most of you need to do so you don't end up trying to replace your windows foolishly again all i'm doing is i'm looking for spots where there's water infiltration okay and i know there's water infiltration there because there's a crack there you know i want to get 90 of this glazing out there'll be a few pieces that'll be stubborn that i won't even try to because they're just too hard you can also get a heat gun and a heat gun is a great way to loosen up really hard glazing [Music] so let's just focus on this one i'll show you kind of the steps of how we restore a window i've already kind of broken this one loose i'm just going to take the loose piece out i'm just kind of rattling it shaking it i'm going to have to remove a little bit more glazing now i feel some caulking here okay this is too soft so this may have been a later replacement or just kind of a paint job that just wasn't very good but i can feel how soft that is see how it's stuck there there's nothing holding it in except the caulk on the inside which is what that one is so maybe they that maybe this was rattling too much they decided to it from the inside not sure exactly but this appears to be what it is trying to cut that line from the inside and i can feel it now so basically what we've got now we went back to our diagram now the glass is gone so we've got this shelf right here that line right there okay now that's what that's what this shelf is okay it's it's probably 3 8 of an inch maybe a little no it's not i'm sorry it's 3 16 of an inch it's not quite a quarter okay that's what our glass is sitting on okay so what we're going to do is we're going to come in here without before this glass gets in here we're going to come in here and we're going to put and this this dimension is really very small it's like 3 16. okay we're going to put a small bead of silicone caulk right here see this little triangle sticking out here that's called a glazing point okay now it's really it's just a diamond it's a triangle right that and wait the way it's shot in there it shoots these glazing points into this and so there's one two three four so that i've got to get out now the reason i'm showing you those is because that's how the glass was historically held in there okay and the reason why some of these pains will rattle especially that bigger pain is because essentially when this glass goes in here okay and this glazing goes on sometimes it doesn't always stick to the glass and so that glass is actually very i mean it's probably 32nd of an inch maybe a 64th but it does rattle in there okay and by going back in with the silicone we are bedding the glass okay some of my other videos you might have heard me talk about never use silicone or caulk on the on a window like this okay so there's a big difference between putting this silicone in as a very small bead to set the glass okay and using silicone as a replacement for caulk okay so there are two different things use a silicone type one okay which means it sticks to glass better and this will actually lock our sash together okay so i'm gonna clean that clean out that groove and then i'm to put a very small little bead of silicone in there and i'm going to set my glass now what that means is i don't have to once it dries i don't have to use any kind of glazing points or any other things to hold the glass in because those glazing points held the glass in while the glazing dried okay is essentially how it works this is from an old sash okay but it's a wavy piece of glass right it's got some good wave in it right so we want to go back with a historic glass we want to go back with wavy glass and so i'm going to cut a new piece of glass i'll show you how to do that and then we'll put this piece of glass in and start putting this window back together you don't want a completely tight fit and so this piece of glass if i measure inside there is if i a tight measurement would be like 11 and 13 16. okay i'm gonna go 11 and a quarter eleven and three quarters okay so not 11 13 11 and three quarters now on the on the height here it's a nine and seven eighths i'll probably just go a 16th under that okay because sometimes when you get it too tight you can end up trying to wedge it down in there and that glass goes and then break it and it's so frustrating so i don't want you to do that so i'm gonna go a little bit under what that dimension is right so eleven and three quarters by nine and i'll do nine and thirteen sixteenths there so just a sixteenth under seven eighths okay we use a uh a glass cutter which is what this is and we will end up marking on here uh this glass and then i'm going to draw it by hand okay now what you want is a little bit of a a soft surface the guy at my shop cuts his on cardboard and uh he'll sometimes just have a little flex in there because as you'll see we're just going to try to break it here now and what i'll do is i'm going to i'm going to mark it on my sheet right here so i have something to follow [Music] so there's my line underneath there and i'm just going to draw this by hand okay kind of hear that glass and i'm just kind of drawing it down very slow and easy now should just be able to flip this over and push down okay so now i have a straight cut [Music] the easiest way obviously is to call a glass company and have them cut it for you now we've got our piece of glass fits in there right okay so now what we'll do is since i've got an historic piece of glass that fits in there i'm going to put in my bead and just set it and then we'll start glazing [Music] okay i'm just setting it in there seating it right and we'll let that dry but you come back and that locks the window together and it keeps it from rattling later now what we're going to use is we're going to use what's called dap 33 there are other kinds of glazing putties there's a sarco plug which is actually a really good putty too basically if you get a size like that or even if you get a gallon size you're going to need to pull it out and knead it okay get it working again and especially it's a pretty cold day so it's what 50 degrees outside so this is like really kind of hard play-doh right now and i'm just going to with the warmth of my hands and just by kneading it there's linseed oil in this and so you're you're trying to work that linseed oil into the putty and we're trying to warm it up i'm just kind of pushing this around the sash right because as you'll see when i go to put this the putty when i draw my knife through here these all kind of get pushed together anyway okay so i'm going to take my little glazing putty knife and i'm going to draw okay so the trick of this thing i want to draw my knife so that it's at that point through the window right all the way to this edge okay so that's where i'm going to put my knife and draw it along here so that i get an even thing what i don't want to happen is my glazing end out out here and then you can see it as a sight line right now this putty is kind of cold so i'm just going to start pushing it in and then i'm going to come back and draw it see so you see me kind of pushing the putty in there not worrying about the excess letting that just go away now what i can do is is now that it's kind of malleable and kind of more in there i can draw my knife along here and you'll see that that i'm basically tipping my knife point up when you're done your glazing point should look like that so tip my blade back right push i'm pushing down fairly hard one because it's kind of so cold today but two just because that helps push that into the groove and then i just draw it up in the corner loose sections like this i just come back and you can come back with your finger and just kind of smooth everything out okay now what happens is because it's linseed oil it's going to be slow drying okay so you may need to let it dry for literally two three four weeks maybe even a month because what's going to happen if you paint it your paint will start to bubble because it's still breathing and still off-gassing that linseed oil okay i'm going to go around and finish glazing this window up and we can put it back in [Music] 50 degrees in texas isn't probably the best day to be glazing a window but you now see how it goes back together with 20 minutes of glazing there but now this window can be cleaned up it's in really good shape and we can put it back in the opening and this sash because of the wood remember the wood quality is you know it's old growth wood it grows slow it's more stable it grows took a long time to grow it has more heartwood all the things that make it last for a very long time so don't go replacing your windows thinking that they're going to be more energy efficient that they're going to last longer because they're not these windows are built to last 100 years this is built 1928 let's say you know it's it's now 2020 nearly 100 years old and really in still good shape so these windows are built to last we're going to put it back in here now and hook up a hookup a weight and get this thing working again okay guys so we're back inside the house and you know we're we've we've glazed our sash everything's kind of cleaned up right for the most part right now we're ready to go back in now these sash cords are still intact but they have paint on them so i'm actually going to change one just to show you how how easy it is typically what happens is is that at some point when they don't want their windows to work anymore they go snip and this thing drops down into there and typically you'll find it you know kind of half you know half cut off and i'll just cut one here and i use going back to those snips i was showing you earlier i use those here too so i'm just going to snip that that that cord show you how you kind of typically find it laying inside your weight pocket now what i'll do is i'm going to pull this out now you can see this kind of crusty what we use is a is a braided cotton sash cord okay and this is the kind of cord you need to go back with because it doesn't stretch okay and uh if you use a nylon cord or something like that it'll actually kind of have some bounce and some stretch to it so i'm going to cut it off more longer than i need now some of you may not have access to a weight pocket this way some of you may have weight an access to a weight pocket in the jamb okay in the side of the jamb in which case you're going to undo two screws and you're going to be working in here okay now that's harder to do because it's harder to get kind of get especially big hands like me i can't kind of get back in there these weights are all typically numbered and they'll have they'll have a weight i think that's our number right there it's probably a five pound weight um but all we're going to do is going to we're just going to mimic this this knot with our new cord okay so i'm going to pull this out kind of a slick way they've got it hanging there sometimes you need to be careful with the way you the way you cut your knot because you can cause the weight to kind of hang like this in the wall which is what you don't want to do because it'll hang up then and and not not hang right right a loop knot they had it like this what you don't want to have happen is you you cut it and then it comes loose okay now it's hanging pretty straight right so that's good and now we've got our we got a brand new weight cord and what we'll do then is then when i'm ready to put that sash in we'll measure it up now i also talked to the shop about standardized parts and remember when i was pulling this out i had a real tough time with this my parting stop which is this this piece here it just was so brittle it just kind of fell apart and i couldn't couldn't get it out the nice thing about you know these historic windows is that they are all standardized parts and so we went to our bone pile and grabbed a parting stop from another job and it fits perfectly right back in there and i'm done right here's our upper sash newly glazed not cleaned yet we'll clean it last okay i'm going to put it back in its track that means i got to get my rope and cord with nail right and i'm going to nail that back in so i'll get my hammer i'll actually tip it up like this [Music] [Applause] [Music] now we get our reused parting stop now we basically rebuilt our track for our upper sash right so now our upper sash goes up and down in this thing it's still a little tight but that'll be worked out with as you get the new paint job when it gets scraped and then with wax when it's done this thing will be working well again okay now a lot of people and a lot of times on our commercial products they don't even like the upper sash to work anymore because we have air conditioning these days they just want to do the lower sash that's perfectly fine i showed you those weather stripping they have a weather stripping detail on here so as windows go and as far as weather stripping goes these are actually pretty good windows you want to be careful that you don't for instance if i nailed this in at this length right i'm going to lift the window and it's going to go what that weight is going to bottom out right so i've actually got a i got to change the height of this weight so it's like this so that when my sash comes up all the way to the top it doesn't bottom out in the bottom okay and i've seen some old houses where masonry and other things have kind of fallen into the weight pocket and the weight won't go all the way down and so it's filled up with plaster or other debris and so sometimes you have to clean out the bottom of your weight pocket but in this case my knot hole's there right and so i'm going to kind of hold that spot there my sash is going to probably stop about right there so i've got plenty of room so i can tie my knot right there so i'm going to hold my finger there make sure that i don't bottom out right yeah i'm not going to bottom out now i've got these windows so that even the lock still works now right now all i have to do is put my stop on okay here's my stop i'll put this back on and that window is back working like new now what's going to happen is is we got to clean this we'll clean it and we'll clean it here in just a second but we've got to clean it and then we've got to have a painter come in and paint this right we put these pieces back in but this is now an operating historic window that will last another 100 years now because it's weather stripped because we live in texas okay we don't have to really do anything the median temperature is 68 degrees so i don't really have a problem with it being too too hot or too cold we also have big overhangs on this bungalow style house right so we actually don't even have much heat gain there's a lot of trees in the front yard the the problem we have in texas is heat gain not heat loss and so if you wanted to make these have them workable maybe if you were anxious about the cold this is where i do an interior storm i'll put the weight pocket wait the mold cover back on i'll put the stop back on i'll clean the window and we've got a working window that's going to last another hundred years [Music] okay guys two hours later right we've got a operable window lower and upper uh sash are working right so this will then get painted right and then we'll wax it and then actually just slide like butter okay so this is a great project okay for homeowners handymen craftsmen right this is something that if you can learn this skill right and it's not hard simple tools whatever you can begin to save the planet right i mean quit throwing beautiful long lasting windows in the dump but in fact let me challenge you right let's start sending pictures let's start sharing what we're doing here show me your pictures show me your restored windows whole miller call homes or send me an email info brenthold.com and we will start sharing these pictures of people restoring windows i know there's guys all over the country doing this let's start getting together quit wasting our money on disposable windows start saving these historic windows together i'm brent hall thanks for watching

Channel: Brent Hull

Views: 110,719

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Id: 4Ajolyww1bE

Length: 44min 39sec (2679 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 17 2021