Friday, August 29, 2008

Mmmmmmm..... Glazed Windows

I've been planning for a while now to take care of the windows on the house. Other than a few small cracks in two of the windows, they're all in pretty good shape. None are painted shut and they all work as they should. Eventually I'll get around to replacing the cracked glass, but for now I'm focusing on the glazing.

For the most part, the glazing is still decent enough for another season or two. The worst parts of any of the windows are mainly the glazing at the bottom.

The window below is the worst one, which needs to be re-glazed on three of the four sides. The paint is also peeling on the wood. My big concern at this point is if there is any rot in the wood.




I got this far just by pulling loose paint by hand, which really had me worried.




After removing the old glazing and as much loose paint as possible, I was happily surprised to find that there was absolutely no rot. I put in a few new points to hold the glass steady and proceeded to the next windows.




Across the back of the house I did work on about half of the windows, again mainly across the bottom of the glass. After getting 'em all cleaned up I primed the bare wood. After a few hours of drying I re-glazed the windows and now get to wait a week for them to dry so I can prime and paint 'em. The picture below is just before the re-glazing.




Another job I took care of today dealt with plumbing for the bathtub. Since we moved in we've had to deal over and over with a slow drain which often clogs. The culprit has been the old drum-trap. Because of the design it's really hard to snake the drain to get rid of hair clogs. I don't mind using Drain-O once in a while, but this drain needs it almost every other week!




I started the work by cutting the whole drum out and picking up an adapter for the copper pipe so I could connect the PVC. I had to get a little creative with some 45* elbows to move the P trap over.

Oh, and the burn mark on the floor joist was NOT from me (you can see it was there in the first picture before I started any work). I hope this was from the previous owner and not a licensed plumber...




With the new trap in place everything drains perfectly now, and if I need to run a snake down from above it'll work. With the drum, the snake keeps getting hung up inside the drum.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Mmm...glazing.

Nice job on the plumbing. I've never seen a drum trap before...interesting stuff.

Muskego Jeff said...

When I renovate that bathroom, I'll replace the "Frankenstein" setup I put in today with something a little cleaner looking. For now, this will work.

That drum was filled with a bunch of nasty looking crud, which came pouring out when I flushed it out in the laundry sink. Yum.

Drums suck - I should have replaced this thing a year ago.

Unknown said...

Good job on the windows and the plumbing! I had a similar problem with my old windows but mine was a little more severe as there were rots in the wood! Hence, I had to replace them. Anyhow, the vinyl replacement windows Minneapolis company that installed these energy efficient windows did a great job. I'm very happy with my new windows.

Your posts are really informative and useful, a big thanks to you!