window insulation upgrade pt1

Once upon a time I dreamed of improving the windows in my daughter's room. No better room in the house to improve first. I actually started this project about a year ago. To make these windows worthy of what I had in mind the window sash themselves would have to be completely restored. They were removed one by one and each got the royal treatment. Much scraping, reglazing, and repainting. With the sash ready to go, the window casing on the interior was also completely scraped/sanded down and primed (final paint is still on my to-do list).

I've put a lot of research into how to make an old window perform like a new energy efficient window. One option would be to use storm windows -- not sure if this was ever really common in el paso, my home did not come with storms (to my knowledge). I've never seen another old home in the area with original storm windows. It can get cold here -- but I guess not cold enough. Although last winter it dipping below zero for a few nights in a row was pretty darn cold. I wasn't about to spring for storm windows though -- I was looking for solutions that were a little easier on the wallet and wouldn't involve much hassle come winter.

A while back I read a few articles on This Old House about Easy Stop weather stripping. I was convinced that I could have my beautiful vintage windows minus the drafts. I actually purchased a set for each of the three windows and had them on standby for nearly a year while I got the windows ready. Yeah, yeah -- I like to take my time ok? I'll show the goods on that next time.. Another good idea I had read about from a past issue of Old House Journal was insulating the sash pockets. I'd seen something similar on TOH using a rigid insulation that was thin enough to stuff into a sash pocket and yet have the weights operate normally. I think they called it a polystyrene foam? Unfortunately for me I could never find a similar product. That is until I stumbled on the Prodex website.

After consulting with customer service, I found that the Prodex Total 16 inch insulation would work for my application. The only downside is you kind of have to order in bulk, but if you use this across multiple windows you can make the numbers work. So after popping the casing off each window, you line the sash pocket with the insulation on all three sides (and top and bottom if you want).

I also replaced the aluminum window jamb liner (I think that's what you call them) with copper V strip. The old stuff worked ok, but the channel in the sash was too wide for the liner to keep tight. A big point for drafts to pass through. The new weather stripping should hold the sash tighter and provide a more solid barrier against the wind. Well that's the hope at least..

nursery windows or die

I've been working on these two windows in my daughter's room for the past six months or so. It's been on and off with these and I'm anxious to just finish them already. I take pride in that the windows in this bedroom will have been fully restored. The exterior framing has been repaired, caulked, and painted. The sash has been scraped & sanded down and the glass reset. I think I broke a pane or two along the way which have since been replaced. The glass has been cleaned and laid in a fresh bed of silicone and fixed with glaziers points. But hey, wait a minute. Didn't I paint the house a few months ago -- including these windows? You would be correct.

Most of the work had already been done by yours truly only to have a mix up with the workers. Unfortunately for me the upper sashes were painted when I wasn't quite ready for it. Problem is I hadn't primed them with my oil based primer yet nor had I completely scraped down the one on the left. The fresh glazing would then be doomed to fail prematurely since the wood would suck up all the oil without the primer. As much as I procrastinated and kicked and screamed along the way, I took these down and pulled out the heatgun, scraped out the glazing, and sanded these down again. They're finally ready for a little wood filler and then I can finally get some primer on these things. It's been a long road but I think I'm finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Once the sashes are complete I have a little something extra planned for these windows I'll share in a future post. To be continued..

kitchen register

Once upon a time I tried finding a replacement for the kitchen heat register. I knew I needed a register for a 10x12 opening, The original replacement I got off ebay went towards the project house when I realized the dimensions were for the outside frame and would never work. So I was stuck with the ugly air return vent pictured above. To tame the amount of airflow I resorted to partially taping the vent. It was a temporary solution until I got off my keester and got a true replacement. Upon my wife's insistence, I finally got a replacement solution off ebay. This one had the correct dimensions so I proceeded to clean up the old duct and spray paint it with some high heat gray paint.

After some tedious cleaning and painting of the new heat register, we installed it and it looks like it's always been there. I'm thinking about continuing the momentum and painting the kitchen too -- it's down the priority list but I think it'll make this room feel so much nicer.

register resurrection

A while back you may remember I introduced some of my old heat registers. They're original to the house and while in fair condition, definitely need to be restored. I got a replacement register for the dining room, but the other two had a few issues that needed ironing out. A crack here, a missing piece there -- luckily I was able to find a good welder to help me put these back into working order. In the interest of getting this information out there for other old house nuts in the EP area, Master's Welding hooked me up.

You might notice a beefy register in the top left photo -- that's my new kitchen register. There's a long story that goes with that so I'll save it for next time. Check those sweet welds!

sponge worthy

I've been saving some pieces of foam from old packages -- my idea to help stop the draftiness in my windows was to cut these to size and slip them in the groove between the sash meeting point and the parting bead. It's an impermanent solution as is, but it seems to work pretty well. I cut down the draftiness big time with just this little trick so I know I'm on the right track. If the Easy Stop doesn't work I'm thinking of doing a McGuyver and gluing these to the bead. I think they would be fairly durable. We'll see..

window insulation

With old man winter beginning to wake up from his slumber, I've been thinking alot about insulation for my windows, particularly the upstairs bedrooms. Currently I'm working on restoring the two side windows in my daughter's room. Since I can't just squirrel these away for a few weeks and work on them full on, the progress is slow. I'm just about halfway done with both of these. What's different about these windows is I did these the "correct" way. That is, removing old glaze then pulling out the glass to clean it. Sand the rabbet (the groove the glass rests in), then reinstall on a bed of silicone. Prime it, glaze it, paint it. So yeah, it's a thing of patience. My window of opportunity is closing (pun intended) so need to finish these up for the season.

The whole point to fixing these windows aside from the whole restoration thing is to make them airtight. Drafty windows suck -- despite their beauty, my wood sashes need some tightening up. The glass on these two windows was barely hanging on. Honestly I don't know how they didn't just fall out with our spring winds. I fixed the glass firmly in place and added some expanding foam in the crevices to the rear of the sill, then caulked the windows. But the windows were still draftier than I expected. A big reason for this is the gap along the parting bead where the upper and lower sash meet. See below.

I estimate I can eliminate 50 to 60 percent of the problem by fixing that gap. But what to use? I've been reading up on This Old House on how to tighten up old windows and one thing I've come across is the Easy Stop system. I'm very interested in that it just doesn't have some silicone strip you put on the bottom and top sash, but a replacement parting bead with insulation built in. I will be investigating this further and have ordered me a sample kit to see if it'll work for me.

In the above picture you'll notice the edge of a metal strip the sash rides on. You may recall I've referred to this stuff as sash rail. I'm not sure if it is original to the house but it does seem to be an attempt at insulation. Of course the bottom part of the sash has a groove that's pretty tight, but the upper part where the sash cord rests in has a significantly wider channel. It's here where we have a problem with air penetration. I'm not sure the Easy Stop will totally fix this (seems like a big gap), but I'm hoping it will. In the meantime I have a temporary solution to help stop the chill this winter..

the attic

Up until a few months ago I'd never had the guts or inclination to venture up into my attic. It's not exactly easy to get into. The access hatch is in the guest bedroom closet and takes some contortion to lift from the ladder and into an angle with which you can pull yourself up & over. I wasn't really sure what to expect -- hidden treasure, a corpse? The possibilities were endless.

The air was thick with a very fine dust so I'm glad I strapped on the dust mask before my ascent. The reason why I went up there in the first place is we had a few big rainstorms in the fall and I noticed water dripping in from the ceiling in the guest bedroom. Didn't want to, but I knew I had to go check it out. A few things surprised me. One, there's insulation up there. I question it's R value, but I figure it's probably better than nothing. Looks like blown in cellulose. There had once been vines crawling up the exterior walls and I found evidence of them up there too. There must be quite a few breaches in the exterior armor that allowed this stuff to get in there. The old duct work from the evaporative AC unit was still intact save for quite a bit of rust on the piece connecting to the outside.

Check out all that water damage. When the HVAC guys installed the new system and removed the old one from the roof they didn't do a good patch job. The claims adjuster also found extensive hail damage from early this year. Luckily my insurance is going to cover the cost for a new roof. I'm super excited. That's one major project we'll be able to scratch off the list several years earlier than we were hoping for. This rocks. More updates in a few weeks...

swanky curtain rods

One of the original reasons for fixing up the windows in this room is so I could finally put up some worthy curtain rods. As you can see in the pic above, come afternoon sun this room can really heat up. In summertime it becomes a blazing inferno. Thus the need to diffuse the light coming into the dining room. You can't see it here, but we actually put up a faux stained glass sheet over the big middle window. This helped bring down temperatures in this room big time. But there was always a need to put up some curtains over these windows both from a heat control standpoint and for privacy. Since these are in the back of the house, I guess heat control won out.. It's been five years that we've lived in this house and we still don't have curtains up downstairs -- these will be the first. I still have the other set of windows in the dining room to overhaul before dressing them up. Then we can finally go for the ones in the living room.

Ok enough with the backstory. I've had my eye on this set of curtain rods since we bought the place. We actually have a pair of the same style in the upstairs bedrooms with a nice oil rubbed bronze finish. I always wanted brass for the formal rooms though. As you can see they are a nice and shiny brass, which I'm not really a fan of. However these are unlacquered so over time will patina to a nice aged brass and match the rest of the brass hardware downstairs. They are nice and beefy though and are pretty heavy. Hopefully a future owner doesn't think they need to toss them as they were somewhat pricey. In fact, my wife has taken to calling them the $XXX curtain rods. I won't divulge how much they cost, but they weren't cheap. Let's leave it at that.

Something else that left a bad taste in my mouth is rejuvenation kept getting my order wrong. I ordered these way back in july and only now do I have the complete set I ordered. I know, I know.. The first time I got one mismatched set of finials. The second time I got my brass finials except they were lacquered. Third time's the charm I guess, as I now finally have all hardware in unlacquered brass. I wasn't too happy about that, but dammit I wanted these rods. It's taken forever, but I am finally content with my dining room windows. Helps give me a little motivation that I can actually finish a project and am not completely crazy refinishing all this wood..

dining room windows saga continues

Wow it's been a while since I've posted anything resembling progress around here. Not to worry, I've been working on several projects. This would be my first blog worthy post in a while. As you can see above I've finally completed the far wall of windows and woodwork in my dining room. It's not a good picture since the light blasts through this room and it's hard to not wash out the detail. I actually sanded down, filled, stained, & poly'd a fairly significant part of this wall. The good thing is I think it's kind of hard to tell what was pseudo-original and the work I just did. I guess that's kinda the point -- I want it to look like it's always been that way.

Let's see, I completely redid the wood trim that spans over the top of all three windows as well as the upper/lower sash of the right window. I partially redid the left window sash and the center window. I also did some touch up on some of the lower trim underneath the windows. I refinished both window sills too. Thankfully I was able to match the color of the stain pretty well. I would call the stain color I'm going for something like an amber caramel. It has some orange-red tones, but the caramel richness helps keep it from looking too bright and light colored. After I put on the second coat of poly did I finally say to myself "wow, that looks pretty nice". I think so at least. It's not perfect, but I think it is so much better than what it used to look like. I can't believe I've been working on this wall for this long. Yes I've been distracted with other things along the way, but for the most part I've been working these off and on since july.

I'm hoping to get started on the trio of windows on the side wall next. Like these, the window sills are crap and need total refinishing as well as a few spots where old curtain rods used to be. There is some rot on the same places as the ones I just fixed, mostly the detail edge of the sash where it meets glass. To help make the back windows bulletproof from any future abuse, I used the same methods for the exterior of applying wood preservative, wood hardener, & epoxy/filler. The color is a little darker and redder than the rest of the stain, but I felt this was a worthy compromise. So like the back windows, I want the side windows completely solid inside and out. Hopefully a future owner of this house appreciates the work I've put into them and doesn't toss them out for some cheap vinyl..

Anywho, here's another picture that shows the three finishes in all their glory. The top finish is the despised ebony stain (which I'm still working on eradicating). The middle finish is the new stain/poly. And the bottom finish is the pseudo-original finish. I think the bottom two are pretty close and I don't think you'd really be able to tell they're not the same finish unless you got right up to them in certain areas. The sash detail that touches the glass is mostly the only place this is most obvious. There's more to the story so you'll have to wait till next time..

dining room restoration: it begins

This is something I've had on my mind ever since we bought this place. When am I going to start refinishing the copious amount of woodwork in the formal rooms? Obviously I've taken my time. Let's see we bought this place close to five years ago and it always nagged at me. "You better get started refinishing all that wood, especially before you start furnishing". Having a kid only complicated matters. What's important is I've decided to get started. And so without further delay, I have commenced work on the dining room restoration. It begins now.

Actually it started around late april when the work on the dining room windows spilled inside. That big middle window needed sanding on the interior detail surrounding the glass. I prepped that, stained and poly'd. Not too long after that I started selectively sanding down the other two windows to address any rot and issues with the finish. What you don't know is that small task has snowballed into addressing all of the issues with the woodwork on that one wall. There was this really cheesy curtain hardware we removed after moving in that left traces of an older finish (see below) as well as a bunch of screw holes. These needed to be sanded and filled. There was also this mysterious black "crud" kind of stuck into the finish. My guess is there had already been a sanding job and they didn't bother to actually clean the wood before applying stain. I suspect all the crud is caked in wood dust. Regardless, it all had to come off. My thinking is why do things only part way that you're still not really happy with? Sure it'd be easier but I'd sleep easier at night knowing that I did it the right way (or at least close to it). Hence a full fledged restoration.

So why the dining room? Well it's the one formal room needing the least amount of work. Only maybe a third to half of the woodwork would need to be refinished. The living room is open to the foyer and to start one of those rooms would necessitate a commitment to complete the other. Not sure I want to do that yet. Ok, so here's what we got going in the dining room. The wood trim is still all there and hasn't been painted. That doesn't mean it hasn't been screwed with though. As I alluded to earlier the finish you see on the lower half of the room is not original, although it is very close. The beamed ceilings are another story. The finish is very nearly black with an obnoxious high gloss finish. Note the light fixture -- that's a story for another day.

Now don't get me wrong, I've seen several homes in the area with an ebony stain very similar (although not quite as dark). Take the project house for example. That house had a rich dark stain and it was original. When you have an original ebony stain on your woodwork like that, you love it. You cherish it. That, however was not the case here. Don't ask me how I know, I just do. Here's a good example of the stark contrast between the upper and lower finish. The dining room looks halfway decent until you look up. Still makes me cringe.

And this is a shot of the beautiful grain underneath all that black slop. It's difficult getting a good picture since the flash totally makes the stain look like black paint. I know most would turn their noses up when talking old pine used as a stain grade wood. There may be a point to this reasoning. Yes it's not as refined as, say oak or mahogany. It speaks to me though. I actually find the grain in this wood quite beautiful. I think it will take the dining room to the next level. Hopefully I won't still be working on this a year from now..

the new hotness

It's no exaggeration, I've been looking for this register for the better part of four years. After buying the house, I scoured ebay and antique stores for the first year. I was bombarded with tons of cool old hardware, but I could never find what I was looking for. After a while I became disgruntled and forgot ebay even existed. My hopes were dashed and it would seem I'd never find that missing piece of hardware to complete this register. A few months ago my interest in ebay was rekindled and I browsed the hardware section every once in a while out of curiosity. I never expected to see this beautiful auer heat register, but there it was. The clouds opened up and a bright light came down from the sky. I distinctly remember hearing the voices of angels. I always thought to myself that if I ever did see it I would spare no expense to get my hands on it. Well, I wasn't going to spend $300 on it -- but the deal I got on it was way better than that. I couldn't resist.

The plan was originally to canibalize the new register for the faceplate that was missing. This thing just looks too nice though. Once I restore the original I may fall back to that plan, but for now it will inject some much needed eye candy in the dining room. I think these are cast iron but they do have a sort of copper planted finish on them. I love these registers. Here's a closeup of the manufacturer's mark. It says "The Auer Register Co. Cleveland O.".

Drool..

old heat registers

One thing I've been blessed with in this house, is much of the original hardware is still intact. Door and window hardware is 95% complete. The heat registers are all there too, save for the one in the kitchen. I'm still hunting one down to put in there. But probably the most important pieces are these fancy cast iron heat registers. I've seen several homes around here with this exact model -- must have been popular in the 1910s - 1920s. The Auer heat register was apparently made in Cleveland, OH but I don't know much more about them then that. If anyone could pass along any info it'd be most appreciated.

The formal rooms in this house have one of these registers each. They're in fair condition -- some surface rust, a crack here or there but nothing too major. At some point in the future I plan to pull them out and give them a proper restoration. This is the register in the foyer:

The register in the living room:

And this is the register in the dining room. We're obviously missing the face plate the door hinges on, so the door is pretty much stuck open all the time. The thermostat is just on the other side of this wall behind the swinging door and so I'd like to be able to control the airflow out of this one a little better. More of the story to come tomorrow..

yep, more window madness

I know, it's been a while. Aside from taking a couple weeks off all things house related, I've been helping restore an elderly neighbor's front porch. I'm only fixing a modest amount of the porch, but it's a slow process. I'm getting close to finishing that, so I'm starting to refocus my energy back to the ol' McBroom house. :)

This is something I've been working on for the past few weeks. I've put a ton of work into this trio of dining room windows, although most has been to the exterior. I can't ignore what it looks like on the inside anymore though. I recently acquired a set of luxurious curtain rods I'm planning to put up over this set of windows. Of course to do that, I need to actually mark everything complete inside & out. If you remember, these didn't look too bad from a distance until you stuck your head up close. The finish wasn't pretty. There was a lot of caked on dirt and the wood was rotted pretty bad in spots.

The repair included lots of scraping out the funk and gluing mullions that had split a little too far.

Ah yes, smooth as a baby's bottom! Today I finally got all the rough and finish sanding done. I added a little wood filler in a couple spots I'd missed too. Once I get the final finish sanding on those last few spots, we're ready for the stain and poly. I am soo ready to get this over with...

dining room window repair

Look closely. See how the bottom of the top sash is kind of wet? I took this picture about a year ago when it was raining. I didn't like what I saw. Mostly because after basking in the glory of "completing" my rear dining room windows in the fall of 2007 did I ever imagine I'd see anything like this. It's been bugging me since then -- the problem never really went away and actually got worse.

The problem was that the bottom part of this top sash had suffered so much wear and rot, that it was still kind of flexible. Over time, the thing would literally slide out of the nails holding it in. It didn't help that the thing was still kind of bowed. To compensate at the time I added a little glazing to make up the difference. Obviously this didn't work very well.

It all started innocently enough -- I wanted to put up something over the large middle window in the trio to help diffuse the intense sunlight that streams through in summer. Stained glass perhaps? Of course to do that, we'd need to pull out the glass since it wasn't seated very well. The silicone that was smeared all over the inside and outside of the framing needed to be cleaned out and sanded down before it was reinstalled flush with a new bed of silicone. And since I'm doing that why not just fix this window that never really got fixed before it deteriorates even more? And while I'm at it why not just give the whole deal a fresh coat of paint?

You can see here the glass is cracked. This was after a failed attempt at drilling in some screws into the bottom of the mullions to hold them flush. The glass was a little fragile and we had a casualty. That's ok though. I'd rather have the integrity of the wooden sash than a small pane of wavy glass.

Holy cow, look at all that caked on dirt! My guess is there were some broken panes that had let in years of dirt and rain, slowly rotting that piece of wood. In the next few entries you'll see how we hopefully solved the problem and made these windows feel as good as they look. Hopefully.

guest room windows, day6

Guest room windows -- done.

Oh yeah that has a nice ring to it. The extra time I put into cleaning up the sashes paid off. I think these came out looking really good. It's hard to get a feel for the actual color of the stain in this room for some reason. The sunlight is blinding in here during the day so you can only really appreciate the color when it's overcast or in late afternoon. Taking pictures during the day was almost impossible as they look darker than they actually are. I took most of these at night instead. It's closer to actual color, but you'll just have to take my word for it. They look sweet. Still need to clean the glass..

This pic was taken during the day and is a much better representation of the stain color. Dare I think about stripping the doors next? Hmm..

guest room windows, day5

Ok back to the windows in the guest room. As we saw in the last post the window casing had been installed but was still in need of refinishing. The plan originally was to just do the basic work of getting these operational with casing and I would finish them off. But after my wife's insistence, we decided to just do the whole shebang all at once. So the stain was next. This is the same Sherwin Williams stain I've been using in other parts of the house, Warm Chestnut. It's the closest match I've found to the original finish in the house. So far I've used the stain when I refinished the kitchen stairs (pre-blog) and the front door.

This actually looks a bit darker than my front door but closer to the finish I was going for with the back stairs. It looks a little darker than it came out as these got touched up a bit along the way. They got hit with some light sanding to even out the color as I wanted to still have the color of the grain very prominent. As you can see the actual sash is still in a rough state. As usual, my plan was to do these at a later point but I decided to burn the midnight oil and get these prepped so we could stain and poly all at once. I think I put about 8 hours into picking out the little flecks of white paint on these babies. You'll have to wait til next time to see the finished product. :)

guest room windows, day3

Once the sash was ready to go, they were ready to be mounted back in their rightful places. They were strung back up with some new sash cord and we were finally able to have a house that didn't look like it was under construction again. With the windows in place, it was time to mill some lumber into exact reproductions of the window casing. Finally this room was starting to look like a 100 year old room again. And from the outside, the exterior framing was able to be caulked and painted. The glass needs a good cleaning from glaze residue, but they are really looking good.

guest room windows, day1

The good thing about having misc projects done for you is they get done in a very short period of time. Something that would have taken you 6 months is scratched off the list in a week. For a while I kind of forgot we have this extra bedroom because we almost never go in there. It was nice seeing the dramatic transformation. It doesn't seem like much, but it totally changes the room.

The crappy white moldings were the first things to go. We could finally see what we were dealing with. I immediately homed in on the wallpaper -- that must have looked interesting. In all we were missing three 8 pound weights. Luckily a PO had the foresight to save these in the basement. Each sash was carefully removed and was thoroughly scraped and sanded down. A head to toe restoration of an old window is a multi-stage task, so we had to grow accustomed to having two giant holes in the side of our house for a while. I was surprised a pigeon didn't set up shop in there, as we only had tarps covering the windows.

guest room window madness

Holy schnikes!

What kind of craziness is going on upstairs? Could it be that I decided to give the middle finger to restoration purity and chucked my old sash for some good ol' vinyl? Nah. As much as I wish I could go for the resto glory, I'm having these done for me. My reasoning is simple. I want these done sometime in my lifetime. So here's what we got going on. The guest room is undergoing some long overdue maintenance which includes restoring the interior casing on both windows. I'll finally be able to put the lumber I bought a year ago to good use. This will be stained and poly'd. Since I am adamant about scratching out the last bit of white paint from the interior side of the sash, that part will stay unfinished. Hopefully I will make sure to complete the job later this year.

Both sashes will be scraped, sanded, reglazed, and painted. They will also be rehung with some new sash cord I picked up. The exterior framing will be caulked and painted as well. You might notice the monster windows are looking a little bare as well (hint, hint). This is going to look so awesome -- I'll try to ignore the patchwork quilt of completed windows. Stay tuned for more updates..

chimney gunk

Take a good hard look at that picture. A couple weeks ago we started having problems with our furnace shutting off constantly and never really heating properly. After much frustration with the HVAC guys, they finally figured out there was an obstruction on our furnace exhaust pipe. This leads to the utility chimney stack shared with the water heater. Needless to say, it's been (many?) years since this has been cleaned out. It doesn't help that the chimney is unlined -- the pipes only entend a few feet up the stack. Aside from the obvious fire danger, this is also a carbon monoxide danger. It needed to get fixed ASAP.

I called a company that specializes in chimneys to come out and take a look. They gave it a good cleaning and I'm so happy that everything is finally back to normal. Furnace is heating as it should, yay!! In the next few weeks we're going to schedule them to come out again and line the chimney with a flue for both pipes and cap it off. Also considering getting it repointed while I'm at it. Let this be a warning to never assume all your exhaust vents are peachy clean. I know I won't..