Wisteria Bend Cottage: Starting the windows and other miscellaneous progress

One of the tough choices we had to make was restoring the old double-hung windows or replacing them with new energy-efficient ones. I think if this house were going to be a full-time residence, we would have been more concerned with energy efficiency. But since our goal is more in line with preserving the cool original features where we can, we elected to have the old ones restored. Over the last week or two the work on restoring the originals began with the guys pulling off the strips that held the window frames in place.

As you may have also noticed they removed the old vinyl flooring from the kitchen and sleeping room too. In the kitchen the bottom layer of linoleum is being a bit more stubborn.

Check out the floor in the sleeping room. The vinyl flooring was only glued around the edges and the original wood flooring in the center is still in pretty good shape.

Seriously...why would someone cover this up with a roll of vinyl??

Here you can see the frames stripped off and the window weights behind. These were originally designed so that the top pane would travel down and the bottom would travel up. To save some money, we are only making the bottom panes functional.

These are really so cool to me. Such a simple and smart system that works relatively well so many years later.

After sanding down the old (nasty poisonous lead) paint, they stacked the freshly sanded trim in the dining room so they can be put back up later.

They've also numbered all the windows, I think so they can put the trim pieces back on the windows they came from. There are 31 windows in the house.

Most of the windows have their original panes, but we're going to have to replace a few that didn't make it.

The front porch hasn't been replaced yet, but in a stroke of luck, we have enough good wood from the porch to replace the flooring in the mudroom, which was replaced years ago with plywood covered with vinyl. Score!