are we done yet?

Yes, I think we can finally check these off yet again. I'm hopeful this time it's for good. And while I'm anxious to get started on a new view of the house with my window rehab, I think I'll take a week or two off from house projects. Then I can get cranking on these again. There's still much to do and I'm determined to get my house completely painted this year.

more progress shots

Not sure if this is worth posting, but I think it's kind of cool.. :)

coming along nicely

Ok so with the old rotted trim removed, we can finally see how it looks with some tight new wood. The right side was really bad, but the left only needed the lower half replaced. Hopefully we've fixed all the issues with this window. I think once we get it caulked and water tight it should weather very nicely.

more window damage

Let's head back outside -- that one window of the dining room trio was definitely the worst. There was a lot of rot and warpage of the wood that was still there. Over time, people had tried caulking the difference, but it just made it look like crap. We needed crisp new wood. Here you can see one side of the framing has a brick molding profile. Luckily the big boxes have this available so it wasn't too painful to fix. Check out how damaged this stuff is though.

As we pulled that off to get to the warped inner trim we found it was a 1x6 that was pretty rotted. This got yanked and replaced as well. When all is said and done this corner will look like new.

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.

it's got potential

This house is a few blocks away from my house and every time I pass by I give a smile, admire the details, and say "it's got potential". This isn't a hulking queen anne -- it's much more modest. But I love the wraparound porch with free classic details and the restrained "baby turret" over the stoop. It overlooks a park on the edge of downtown and is flanked by its twin just across the street. They stand like sentinels overlooking the park. This one is a little more rundown than its neighbor -- the brick has been painted and the landscaping is nothing to get excited about. It's been made into apartments too. From the outside though it doesn't look too bad though. Some TLC to be sure, but it doesn't look to be falling apart. It just went on the market. If I were in different circumstances I would go make an offer tomorrow. Alas it's not to be, but maybe it speaks to you?

backyard tuneup pt2

Yay -- I'm finally able to use my planting bed. It was a very long wait but worth it (I think). I happily filled it with some plants. In a month or two these should fill out a bit so it doesn't look so sparse. 'Til then, I have a bunch more planting to do. We got some indian hawthorn, a dense evergreen shrub with pretty whitish-pink flowers. Fairly common in landscaping around here.

Day lillies -- these are just so pretty.

And some sweet lavender. As you can imagine, the patio is much more fragrant already. :)