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Does anyone in or near Chicago have a 34 x 15 7/8 piece of wavy glass? I need one to replace the nonwavy glass I broke. Despite my old-window-hoarding ways, I don’t have a piece that wide. I do have smaller pieces, particularly if anyone’s looking for a pane of a multi-light sash.
After all the work I put into restoring nearly 100-year-old windows, it’s annoying to be able to see the metal point or the paint that covers the glazing from the inside of the window because of a shallow rabbet holding the glass. So, on the advice of my old-house cohort, I snipped the tips off the points that protruded beyond the edge of the rabbet or would force me to paint so that it would be visible from the inside. I’m pleased with the results and the approach, which takes only a few more seconds when installing the glass.
A full-size glaziers point
Snipping off a millimeter or two
A shorter profile that allows for applying putty and paint without them being visible from the other side
Something is going to happen with the porch today. Be scared so we don’t have to!
Having finished painting the porch parts (at least until that guy decides the real lengths we’ll be using and chops off a bunch of baluster and railing ends—sending me back to the brush), I’m returning to the window project. Parts of the bottom sashes had rotted out, so I soaked them in an epoxy sealer to stabilize and strengthen the remaining wood. And I’ve been puzzling my way through replacing the missing wood with an epoxy filler, an oak-colored wood filler, and new oak.
The other night, I was working on the sashes in the kitchen because I was plum sick of being in the basement. I was debating with myself about whether it was going to be worth it in the end to continue with my approach of filling the deep gaps with epoxy and then embedding a piece of new wood as the top layer. The concept being that it would look better to have wood on top rather than the epoxy patch, which is white (and I’d have to do faux-graining over with gel stains). Then I noticed the oak dust in the corners of the plastic container I’d been carrying these little oak scraps around in, and I experimented with jamming them on top of the epoxy to create a wood layer. But I ran out of oak dust. Then I saw the food processor on my stove that I’d used the night before to make pesto out of my mountainous basil. And—look out—the lightbulb popped on over my head. That guy was alarmed to see me running oak bits through my old Oskar, and he wisely reserved comment and went away. But it worked! And I scored more oak dust. Now, a couple days later, I think this approach worked well. It’s a lot easier than trying to shape little pieces of wood to fit the irregular gaps in the sash.
So today I had to fill some more gaps and, knowing that my cohort is a clever, tool-using monkey, asked him whether he had a better idea than my food processor. And he did. He directed me to hold a baggy around the dust chute of the radial arm saw while he chopped repeatedly through a piece of oak. And voila—baggy full of perfect oak dust. So I sludged that up with the epoxy filler and got an excellent gap-stopping goo.
I only just wish I’d thought of this earlier. Oh well—call it evolution.
Yesterday step one was started on the porch project. That is putting in the temporary porch supports. I’m going to wait a few days to let that do its inevitable settling then shim it sure again.
Then things get really fun.
