Uncovering Hidden Windows in my guest room

Leah Frances

My latest project is my large guest room. We knew that one of the walls was 'false' and concealing a pair of windows (you could see the windows from outside).

Demolition - I rented a dumpster and hucked all the debris out the window - very satisfying. Here's a pic of halfway through the demo.



Peeled off three layers of wallpaper. They conveniently PAINTED between the first and second layer making it quite a PITA to scrape.

They also PAINTED the hidden windows shut from the outside! You can easily see the paint on the upper sash. It took a bit of patient work to remove the sashes. I kept the interlocking weather-stripping in place because it was in good shape and engaged with the sashes nicely.



I removed all the old paint, sanded and rehabbed the sashes. This involved re-attaching loose muntins and re-squaring a corner or two. The upper sash is still raked out of square by 1/4 inch, but it opens and lowers nicely in the window. The lower sash is perfectly square and also performs nicely.

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If I could only remember to THINK about what I was doing before I did it.

Leah Frances

I planned to keep the old unbroken glass (3 out of 4 panes were in good shape). It wasn't 'wavy' or particularly old, but I hate throwing things away. It proved to be such a time waster to scrape all the old paint that I elected to replace it with new glass - two trips to lowes later I had a nice dry fit.





I set the points and tried my hand at glazing! I've never done this before, but I read a book and watched a video on youtube . After about 45 minutes I got the hang of it and could run a straight line.

Couldn't get a good glazing pic, but I'll post some tomorrow.

__________________
If I could only remember to THINK about what I was doing before I did it.