Goodbye Buffalo, NY; Hello Eastport, ME
After 5 years of visiting Eastport, I am officially a resident. My partner and I bought a cute little Greek Revival house with many historic features intact - including two windows! I have been working on getting the business officially launched and have a space found, ad placed in the Quoddy Tides and the formal business set-up is well underway. I hope to be up and running in February so feel free to contact me if you’d like some windows restored.
I have been hearing that I should post some photos of window restoration that I have done or been apart of in the past, so here I go:
Here is a good example of a full window restoration at our former home on the West Side of Buffalo. The house is an early example of an American Foursquare and the windows are a typical one over one with a rope and pulley system.
The storm windows were triple track windows that were in bad shape so we replaced them with custom wood storm windows. They are made of very durable sapele wood and the design is based on the few original storm windows we had. They were built and installed by Northwood Historic Restoration (who I later worked for). You can see that the storm is pushed open by Storm Window Stays from SRS Hardware which, I personally love. They allow you to push the storm open from bottom when you’d like a nice breeze and pull them back in and secure them when you’re done from the inside - never needing to scale the outside of your home.
The sash themselves were mostly in good shape but the location on the stairs seemed dangerous for standard glass so I replaced it with laminated glass. New window weights were installed to accommodate the change in weight caused by the change in glass. The finish was restored by using shellac with a tint that matched the shellac based finish of the trim around them.
The jamb was scraped, primed and painted and new sash cord was installed.
Here is an example of one of my favorite things to experience with window restoration. This sash lock was found on a window that was thrown into the garbage. It was smothered in many years of paint but after a little time in a crockpot and a trip on a wire wheel, it came out being absolutely beautiful.
The above two photos are from some attic windows I restored in Buffalo, NY. They were in pretty rough shape. The above process photo shows “re-pinning” the sash at it’s joint. The discoloration to the wood and the amount of work that was needed to get them going again would lead many to think they were “too far gone.” The second photo is of the windows all completed and re-installed. They’re beautiful and such a significant part of the home’s architecture. Most windows aren’t “too far gone” and they’re very much worth the time to restore.
