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Removing paint and putty from old windows

Removing paint and putty from old windows Our Victorian house has its original windows. They have lots of divided lites of different sizes glazed with lovely old wavy glass. Every window needed to be stripped of its paint and putty, then reglazed. It was a daunting job.

We used a heat gun with a tip that creates a concentrated stream of hot air capable of softening both paint and putty to where it can be scraped away. At first, we used foil-covered pieces of plywood to protect the glass. But that proved to be time-consuming because it required various sizes of plywood to match the different windows.

The drawing at left shows the method that we finally settled on. We used a drywall taping knife, propped up by a spring-clamp leg, as a heat shield to protect the glass. This worked surprisingly well because the radiant heat bouncing off the knife seemed to help speed things along.

Incidentally, we were concerned about the possibility of lead paint on the windows, so we worked on them outside, wearing suitable respirators. We took the scrapings to our local transfer station for proper disposal.