The Window! It’s Finally Done!
… at least as done as it is going to be this time around. It was a busy push until the end, but we did it! The trim and frame managed to get three coats of shellac, which seems to be enough. Looking at it up-close after everything was said and done, I think that it would have benefited from a fourth coat, but time wasn’t going to favor us in that regard. Jenny and I think that it looks good, though.
We went to breakfast at Eat ‘n’ Park this morning, then went to church. We saw my parents there. They were making hamburgers later today, so they said they’d bring us food later. That was one less thing that we had to worry about today, which was good. When we got home from church, I sanded and put another coat of shellac on the frame and trim (that was to be its last–coat #3). I then went to fetch my furniture paste wax and application material, and brought that upstairs. I wanted to make sure that the whole window sash and friction points on the frame had a good coat of wax on them to keep the shellac from sticking.
While the wax was setting, I went outside and put some stripper on some of the trim parts from around the transom. These still had a few sticking bits of paint that I wanted to remove before getting them ready for reinstallation. They weren’t necessary for today’s work, though, so they were not high-priority.
While those parts were stripping, I went back in to buff the wax coat. Wow. That really made the sash look sharp. I might put it on all the trim, simply because I like the finish that it left. By the way, for the skeptics: Paste wax, when applied correctly, does not build-up. It is a film finish that is not additive. When one applies more wax at any point in the future, the buffing process removes any extra wax, leaving behind wax only where the original coating had worn away. I can’t speak for the “wax” in the spray can–I use old-fashioned paste wax from a can, and apply it with a pad made by wrapping a ball of the wax in a gauze-like fabric, then buff it with a lint-free cloth. It looks great, and is easy to maintain.
At this point, the sash was pretty much ready for reinstallation. The shellac had been dry on the frame and trim for a while, the wax was buffed, and everything was ready to go. I decided to take a rasp to the inside edge of one of the frame members that had been a serious sticking point (literally) for sash movement. I took off a little wood there, applied some additional wax, and buffed it again. It was time for window installation.
I didn’t want to bother my wife, who was doing other housework at the time, so I decided to give it a shot myself. It turned out to be easier than I had expected, which was good. I got the chains re-attached and the sash in place, and went to try to move it, and… woosh! It worked. And it worked amazingly well. The biggest problem was that it was heavy to close, and it wants to open by itself a bit. I suppose the window has lost some weight over the years, with the wood drying out more, and probably with the little bit of wood that we removed in sanding. If that’s the only problem that we have to deal with on that window, I think we’re doing well.
After cleaning it with a few applications of denatured alcohol and then Windex, it looks pretty darn good. I need to take a razor blade to a few spots on the glass that got a bit of shellac on them (the denatured alcohol is a shellac thinner, but there were some heavier deposits that didn’t seem to want to leave), but that will have to happen later. I also decided to put one of my little pins back into the one chain to keep the sash closed. I put stripper on the original brass latches, but they’re going to need some additional attention to make them functional again. Removing the weight on one side of the sash is enough to keep it closed, so we’ll leave it like that for the moment.
Right after I finished getting the sash reinstalled, my Dad arrived with food. Yay! Food! He came with additional food goodies, too, besides the burgers. Yum. So we chatted with him for a while and ate. After we were done, I went in and cleaned-up most of my reinstallation mess. There are a few places that need some touch-up shellac after reinstalling some of the stop moulding, but that’s easy to do. At this point, I was dead tired, so I stopped for the day. Jenny went in and washed most of the walls tonight, in preparation for getting paint on the walls.
This week I have a show to do, so I’ll be busy every evening. We’ll be working Saturday and Sunday on the room again. This time, we’re going to be going full-blast with the chemical stripper on as much woodwork as we can in the room. It would be awesome if we could get most of it done then.
(a very tired) jonathan
