EXERCISES IN WINDOW RESTORATION

I thought I'd illustrate a few of the techniques and results that make antique window restoration so fulfilling. I've been doing it as part of my restoration services for years, but got much better while working for Stephen Marshall LLC of Coventry, Connecticut. Steve did most of the repair work and left the glazing and painting to me.
Yes, it takes practice, time, and effort. Yes, you can spend a lot more and get replacement windows for your old house. They won't look the same, even if they LOOK the same. Shadow lines and relief angles will be slightly off unless you get a really great mill shop to make exact replicas, and then you're talking mucho dinero.

Original windows, if restored properly, outfitted with weatherstripping, and fitted with a storm window, are just as efficient as replacements.

Plus, if you have your original windows restored, there are tax credits available you'll lose if you replace your windows with anything that doesn't match the original. Sometimes TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS in tax credits. But that is another story.

I'll use the J.B Williams Soap Factory Main Office in Glastonbury, Connecticut, as an example. I may have posted this building before, but not in this context.

The Soap Company Main Office, now owned by Translators and Interpreters Inc. It was the Glastonbury Board of Education before IT got it, an apparently someone tried to burn it down. Probably has more history I don't know. I do know its windows. Intimately.

A beautiful building with Classical details, fantastic brickwork, and a Portland sandstone foundation quarried from the town next door.

Arch top windows, fourteen over twelve lite double hung overhead sash. This one needed work. They all did.

Same side, similar window, totally restored. We only restored the sash, not the frame, The frames had been repaired and repainted a bit before.

And yes, they all operated once we reinstalled them. Not that anyone was likely to open them. Why?

One of the interiors before removal. One of the reasons the windows are in such gnarly shape is that they never had any outside storm sash. Until we got there, they never had any storms at all. The owners decided to have Innerglass interior storm windows installed, which seal very well, but still don't protect the exteriors.

They also keep people from opening them. But this is an office, and they didn't WANT to open them.

We had to remove and install the sash on weekends, as the place is a hive of translator activity during business hours. We also could not remove the desks, file cabinets, or computers, so we built some amazing structures to access the windows from the inside. We also worked in winter, so as soon as the sash were removed, we installed  pre-made plywood inserts lined with insulating material, then reinstalled the Innerglass storms. It stayed pretty toasty, and we brought the sash back to the shop for restoration to be returned as quickly as possible. The ladies that work there like their light.

First step is to steam the sash to soften, then scrape out the putty. This is actually a different window, but you get the picture. We were salvaging the glass from this window to put into another, newer sash. We wanted the old glass, and steaming the sash is the safest way to remove it without breakage. The steam box is in the background, built into the wall. It takes about twenty minutes to soften the putty and about half the sash can be scraped before it starts to harden again. So we stagger sashes for efficiency.

This particular set of sash had one of our banes; twisted glass. This stuff, sometimes referred to as 'potato chip' glass, is very difficult to set in a flat sash. Normally backbedded in glazing compound and held in place with small metal points, these babies need to be set in caulk without points, otherwise they'll break. And we don't break glass, oh no. Especially this stuff; it's very old, filled with streaks, bubbles, and convolutions, and can only be replaced with glass of its kind.

Otherwise the earth will fall off its axis.

Yes, that's an air conditioner in the interior wall. It gets godawful hot in that room in the summer.

 

This is the new sash that got the old glass; note the squoozed-out caulk. Technical term, you're not allowed to use it. It would be cut away with a razor after hardening. Non-traditional method, but we didn't break no glass!

After removing the glass, which we soak in water to loosen the remaining hard putty and paint before hand-cleaning it, we use an infrared heater to soften the paint and remove it. Then the sash is hand scraped, sanded, and taken to the paint shop for priming, painting, and reinstallation of glass. All the dirty work is done in the 'clean room,' which is anything but. Since we work with lead paint dust and heated paint fumes, we wear custom-molded respirators, Tyvek suits, and use a lot of ventilation. The lead paint dust, chips, and refuse is gathered and disposed of in accordance with good environmental procedures set by the State and Federal agencies.

In the picture above, the chips are falling into our downdraft table, which has a very powerful motor to gather the debris. But the sash on the table had a pleasant surprise for us; it was coated with amber shellac before being painted. This made it very easy to remove the paint from the shellacked surface. Then we merely used steel wool and denatured alcohol to strip the shellac.

See how easy it is?

Yeah, we didn't think so either.

Here is the first glazing/painting shop. We set up a separate one later, to divide the sash repair area from this, which needs to be kept very clean to do good work. Everything on wheels. Formica table for glazing without marring paint, easels that can handle small, medium, and large sash. And the Soap Factory Office windows were perty big.

Applying putty. The closest three panes have been puttied, the farthest there have just have the putty applied by mashing into the putty rail with thumb and palm. The rest of the window hasn't been puttied yet. Once the putty is applied, it's worked into its tight angles with a bent bladed putty knife. It takes some time to learn to glaze like this, but once it's done properly, it looks great by being nearly invisible from both inside and out, and it repels water for many decades, sometimes for a hundred years if kept painted. The putty should never go over the line of the interior crossbar, or muntin. Hey, these are technical terms, people. Not for civilian use!

My lil' fren. We glazed a lot of windows together...

I clean my glass as I go; putty has linseed oil to help it adhere as well as making it malleable, so it leaves a seriously oily haze on the glass. But we have ways of dealing with that.

COCAINE!

Yes, a few lines of this and you don't even notice the haze!

Okay, it's actually CaCO2, calcium carbonate, known in the business as 'whiting,' but known to you as chalk. I'd sprinkle just a bit of this on the glass and use a china bristle brush (seen in the background) to lightly scour the edges of the glass. It's just enough to remove the haze without marring the still-soft putty.

Like working the putty, it takes practice to do it right, but the results are staggeringly beautiful. And it cleans the glass quick, too.

I have since switched to pumice for cleaning the glass. It works faster and helps the putty to cure just a bit quicker.

You can see the glazing haze here.

Along with proper putty application.

Back at IT, the windows gleam. Okay, it's the sunlight, but having restored, newly painted windows with clean glass helps.

This bank turned out especially well, as it allows for some standing room on a sunny winter day. That it faces south helps let the sunshine in.

Didn't see this until installation. And I'm not talking about the painters' scratches around the edge of the pane; those come from using a flat-bladed scraper known as a 'five-in-one-tool' instead of a single-edged razor blade. We mark each sash with a sharpie before removal so they will go back in the same place; this saves a lot of headaches upon reinstallation of each pane. But others marked them earlier than we; I hadn't noticed this etched letter "E" (I suppose it is, I print) on the glass. Easily accessed from floor level, I thought some kid might have done it while bored, but it was the Board of Education, not a school. Or maybe it was a school. As I said, I don't know all of the building's history.

But the pen(knife)manship is nice.

Not so much with this letter "I." Or perhaps it's an "H" carved from a prone position.

Hey, education made me sleepy, too.