Much has progressed at lightening speed in the last couple of days. Perspiration is flying, dust is lifting, the sound of scrubbing and scraping can be heard for miles around. I am surprised it has not drawn a crowd! The weather has been mild during the day and cool in the high 20's at night. Mr has sorted the panes of glass and will strategically glaze the bubble/rolled glass panes (which are original to the house) into the sashes for best effect. He has restored the windows in a historically proper manner and they look great. Surprisingly the rolled glass panes has sustained a streaky stain over the last 140 years. The irregularity in the glass is quite interesting and entertaining. All have been painted a bright clear white that looks very crisp and clean. These windows were the dirtiest, grimiest, most filthy windows I have ever seen in my life...and I have spent way too much time New York City-so I have experienced some of the worst windows in the world. Anyway, the whole place feels like it has been pressure washed from top to bottom. That is how much the state of the windows effects the ambiance of the place. Each window was dismantled, scrubbed and scraped, then painted. The tracks of the storm windows were scrubbed with a toothbrush to remove the soil and dirt that has accumulated in there over the twenty years it has been since they were opened. Some dental tools would have helped with that job, a super suction mouth drain would have made the job much more tolerable. But, it is done and it looks super. After the scraping and cleaning we put on 1-2-3 primer which is expensive but amazing. It seals the old paint, or wood, or whatever surface and makes it accept new clean paint. After the 1-2-3 we applied Valspar exterior white semigloss trim paint, I think the color number is 1199 or something like that. We have been very happy with this paint. Previously we used to use only Benjamin Moore paint, but the local franchiser charges over $50 a gallon for their paint. We chose to abandon the Ben Moore and switched to Valspar. It has been a good choice. We tried Olympic paint, semigloss interior, and were very disappointed in that....it ran in drips down the wall a short time after it was applied. So Valspar it is. Thanks Lowes!
Now for the decorating insight. The room we painted was completely 1970-80. It is a Navajo White (I guess) and it had soldier blue-willliamsburg blue-chair rail, mouldings, and doors in the room. My girls told me to lose the blue moulding the first day we took posession of the house...but there was so many other problems to deal with that I chose to solve those problems first. As the windows progressed and were painted I could not believe the change it brought to the room to have just part of one window painted white. This motivated me to get as much of the mouldings, window trim, doors and radiators painted white asap. Now, the rest of the room is still 20 year old Navajo White, but the amazing thing is that just changing the trim color changes the whole room. It made it seem as if the whole room had been redecorated. I could not believe how much better the room felt. The white velvet curtains looked super and the platinum tone curatin rods also looked great. The white trim really showed those elements off in a way that the blue had just stomped on. So I will post some window pictures, but will probably not post a complete portfolio of the windows until tomorrow. This makes me very happy to have a room that looks good and makes me feel good. Things are looking up. There is a lesson to be learned from this. Take the time to study the room and pick that one thing that you guess will make a huge difference and do it first. On a limited budget this could buy you some time to finish the room, but get some good bang for your buck at the beginning of the project.
This is the "window shop". otherwise known as the kitchen table. Next photo is scraping in process.
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