Big_B

We live in a 1900's Victorian Farm house, it was owned by my wife when we got married 4 yrs ago. She had previously gotten quotes for replacement of the 33 windows, and at over $33K she decided to wait --- thank goodness.

I'm a contractor / handyman who loves old houses and though some of the windows leaked badly none had ever been weather stripped. I'm a fan of the "Spring Brass" stripping, and have slowly been restoring the worst windows first and working my way through the lot of them.

This past spring we had the whole exterior stripped and repainted and I took that opportunity to caulk-in all of those areas where air infiltrates into the weight pockets and walls. When the exterior was finished I installed Harvey Industry's "True Channel" low infiltration storm windows and we could not be more pleased with the results.

If people would stop and think about the longevity of materials, our WOOD windows are 110yrs old and still in excellent condition with very minimal basic maintenance. There is even a company here in New England that will install insulated glass panels into your existing sashes and apply real wood muntin bar profiles to the glass to replicate the divided lite look that was there.

If all of the wood --- sashes, jambs, parting beads and sills are in good shape, to replace weight cords and apply weather striping should only take 2 - 4 hrs (depending on one sash or two) and should cost between $200 - $300 dollars per window. Sometimes the top sash is so badly painted-in that it is not always economical to do, but also is, consequently, not leaking. Any other restorative work from there is still worth it because you ultimately end up with a superior window that will work for Hundreds of years.

www.ArmstrongReConstruction.com --- "I LOVE to do Windows"!