When these windows were made Andrew Johnson was President of the United States, the civil war just ended and our national railroad system was still being built.
These windows have no glue and no nails in them... just small wood pegs and incredible craftsmanship to keep them in perfect form for over 160 years. How could anyone throw them out?
When we first purchased Belle we talked to many people who regretted that they replaced their original windows and that sealed the deal for us.
We bought this house to save everything beautiful about it - and a HUGE part of that are the 17 double hung 160 year old windows.
So over the years Jeffrey spearheaded the painstaking effort of taking out each window and stripping off a century worth of paint.
And year after year he kept working... and kept working.... and kept working.
And they are still not done. (ugh)
So now it is time to get serious. Really serious.
We are determined to FINISH THIS HOUSE in the next 6 months - but, there is no room in the budget to have someone else do this work for us..... (inset sad face) what do we do?
We did what we had to do..... and we decided to replace the windows.....
.... for about 1 week and then we discovered that neither of us could handle the idea.
Now what? .
Is there anyone out there that believes in saving old windows as much as we do?
"Restoring" means returning a space to its original appearance... and that is what we set out to do.