WARPED WINDOW RAIL, 607 SOUTH OAK, LITTLE ROCK ARKANSAS
Having worked as a restoration tech for a couple of the finest Historic Restoration companies in Connecticut. I am always amazed at my being laid off. And it's not a seasonal thing, either. In case you office people don't know, a LOT of fully employed craftsmen and construction workers are laid off seasonally, especially roofers, framers, and painters. It is, of course, due to the New England weather.
But my layoffs came out of nowhere, when work slowed or Those in Charge decided to trim the fat, had other ideas to chase, or because I was just too damn good at what I do.
Yeah, sure, That's the ticket. Just too good.
I'm so humble I can't stand myself. Really, I can't.
I'm sure they had their reasons, and I sometimes got rehired when big jobs came up and they needed me.
But I always worked as an independent repair and restoration contractor when I lived elsewhere, so when I was offered a winter job in Little Rock, I loaded up the truck and moved to Oak Street.
This little 1930s nondescript rabbit warren of house had been a cheap rental of one of my best employers for almost 25 years, but as the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (the biggest hospital in the state) expanded, the neighborhood became more valuable, the houses got fixed up, and what had been jokingly referred to as "Soak Street" (South Oak, or S. Oak, get it? Yeah, me neither) became worth restoring. And boy, did it need work.
I'm sure you'll see some of the repairs I did in future posts; they aren't the 'pretty,' 'historic,' or 'unusual' restorations I sometimes do, but a meat and potatoes kind of restoration.
Master Bedroom before restoration, complete with junk, square fiber-tile ceiling, and plywood subfloor; my bed is in the central room, as they set me up in the house which I restore. Hey, the dogs like the change of venue.
Same room after restoration
Not exactly the Taj Mahal, but it was a hell of a lot nicer throughout the house once done.
One of the main problems was the windows, and the weather caused a good deal of those problems.
One thing about Arkansas in winter; expect rain, and a lot of it. The little river in the backyard was a weekly occurrence, since the Mazarn Shale bedrock lay only six inches below the soil. I built boardwalks so the dogs, who travel with me on jobs, could go into the yard without being swept away. Also so I can reach my grill, an absolute necessity.
This house had no gutters, and that caused most of its problems. We spent almost $10,000 dollars just jacking and repairing the foundation framing, which had been nearly underwater for eighty years. Trust me, people; gutters will save your house. Don't believe me? Go out in a heavy summer rain and watch where the water goes. It ain't into the ground. It goes under your house, onto your windows and doors and trim, and all the places it shouldn't.
GET GUTTERS. And keep them clean.
And so the rain made the few original wood windows unhappy.
One of the better sashes, soon to be restored.
This is what rain does to the end grain of a window joint when not properly caulked and painted. Especially when there are no gutters.
More fun with rain and windows; both these areas of damage were repaired.
See the repairs? Of course you don't; they're on the other side of the sash. But they look just like this side....
This is one of the good ones.
Not one of the better ones
One in particular needed surgery. It was a bottom sash, and its top rail (the meeting rail with the other window sash above) was magnificently warped. I considered going though a bunch of salvaged sashes to see if I could find one that might be carefully cut to match, but I knew this was fool's errand. Few windows of different sources can be cannibalized to repair other windows. But one day, while figuring where I'd replace the crappy aluminum sashes from the 70s with better replacement windows (only in a nondescript rental; I always try to save and restore wood sashes), I noticed one of the above-the-sink windows was one I'd have to replace, as it was wood, but badly damaged,.
"But the top rail isn't, and it looks like one of the double-hung sashes!"
And so it was. Someone had removed a window somewhere and had turned two old double hungs (one sash over the other, with the lower sash the one that opens) into a erstwhile casement sash that hung on hinges and opened inwards.
And it had to go.
I had my cannibal victim.
I removed the wood dowels at the corners of the rail (the dark holes in the corners of the window above) as well as at the end of the muntin (the wood in the middle dividing the panes of glass) and cut the caulk that had been used instead of putty (DON"T EVER USE CAULK TO PUTTY WINDOWS!!), and with some wiggling and dancing around saying incantations, the rail slipped out intact.
I sanded the tenons and mortises (the joiny parts, sheesh), treated them with penetrating wood hardener (tightens the grain and hardens the fibers, Minwax makes a good product for this, as does Abatron), primed them and did a dry fit before gluing them up on a straightening table (makes sure the window is square). I added wood dowels and glued them where they had been removed.
Rail replaced just before sanding and priming
I then sanded the entire sash, oil primed it, and put new glass in with my favorite glazing compound, Sarco Type "M". You can only get it online, but it works great and sets up in four days. Of course I backputtied the glass before setting it and used metal points to keep the glass in.
I'll give a lesson in glazing windows in a future post.
In five days, I painted the sash with two coats of exterior acrylic semi-gloss and rehung the windows.
I pretended not to notice the steel siding we needed to remove, but hey, I had at least removed the ivy (the strange marks on the siding). The windows were more important. And now I had windows that did not let in the wasps, ants, and possums.
It IS Arkansas, after all, y'all.
And I apologise for my overuse of parentheses.
(Really I do)
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