Introduction

Hi,

I'm Holli, and together with my husband Tom, we own a 110 year old home, in the Old Louisville Historic District , in Louisville, Ky. I guess you would call the style 'Eclectic Italianate'.  It has columns on the porches, large stone lintels over the windows, dentil moulding at the roof line, but a large, gable peaked roof.

We bought the house last April and spent the first six months making it habitable. The same family had lived here since 1957 and it appears that all repairs and maintenance stopped when the husband died in 1981. We have lived here for a year and have done all the work ourselves, except for the new wiring and the box gutters.  

We have 29 windows in the house.  That does not include the windows that are in the doors or the transoms, just windows.  All the windows, like everything else in the house, need work. I joined this forum board http://www.oldhouseweb.com/forums/  when we started looking to buy an historic home. This is where I learned that there were people brave enough to restore their own windows.  Tom and me being the do-it-your-self types, decided we would restore our windows ourselves.  We spent the last year amassing the the tools and supplies necessary for this type of undertaking. We went to seminars, watched videos, read everything we could find on restoring historic wood windows.  I asked questions on forum boards and relayed info to Tom.

Now, a year later we have started this project and we come to the reason for me starting this blog.  While doing all my internet research there was so much information and yet so little. We had to piece together so much of what we know from so many different sources. I will admit  I felt less than confident when it came time to remove our first window. We would like this to become a resource for anyone thinking about restoring their own historic wood windows.  We want it to be a one stop place where you can see the actual job being done by actual homeowners and get get the information you need to do the job yourself and feel confident in your own abilities.

We will post a list of all the things we bought and or use to restore our windows, the costs and our opinions, when they apply. There will be photos and videos of our progress, links to other resources, and any other information pertinent to restoring and preserving historic wood windows.

We hope you come back often and track our progress and hopefully gain the knowledge and confidence to restore your own windows.

Holli and Tom