Window Restoration

Cook's House Window Restoration

Materials for the window restoration were purchased by Friends. Labor for the project was provided by Friends’ volunteers under the oversight of Debbie Meeks who offered to lead the project as gift-in-kind of professional services. The grant-making agency, Florida Division of Historical Resources, required that the restoration work be completed by a person with extensive experience and expertise in historic preservation and restoration, including expertise with restoration of historic windows. The Division vetted Debbie’s professional experience extensively and affirmed her credentials to manage and be responsible for the work. The gift-in-kind was valued at $10,640 which the Division accepted in partial payment of the required $15,000 match that Friends needed to contribute in order to receive the $60,000 grant funding.

Thanks to the work and perseverance by Friends' volunteers, this building and the stories it tells will be preserved for many years. A new roof and restored windows made it weatherproof and the Lower Suwannee NWR is pursuing termite extermination and protection.

There's much more to do to get the Vista Camp ready for regular public visitation. If you haven't already, please sign up for our News Brief and get involved with Vista.

Many thanks to:

The Florida Department of State, Division of Historic Resources
The volunteers including Debbie who contributed 345 hours of labor to restore the windows. This truly was a labor of love that was estimated originally for only 133 hours!
And, many thanks to all of us who support Friends’ programs and projects such as Vista and the Junior Rangers through our annual membership contributions and with project-specific donations.

Before

After

Document the existing conditions

John McPherson and Debbie Meeks keyed the 10 window sashes and 5 matching frames with numbers.
Carefully removed the window stop trying not to break it because it will be reused.
These windows were built without window weights so that saved some steps that would typically have been done.
Then one person inside and one outside, carefully removed the sashes and stacked them for transport to the workshop.

Debbie and John then protected the empty window openings using plastic sheeting and furring strips.

Remove the Glass and Clean the Sashes

Back in the workshop, Marc Woodmansee, David Meeks, John McPherson and Debbie Meeks all took a turn and tried different techniques to remove the glazing putty that had become rock-hard over the years. We were careful but still broke nearly half the panes getting them out.

Intact glass panes are labeled to be replaced in the same opening because they are slightly different sizes.

Old paint and years of dirt was meticulously cleaned off by John McPherson and Jeri Treat.

Debbie cleaned, sanded and repaired the sashes.

These cypress window sashes are in remarkably good shape for their age and exposure. One of them had some rot but Debbie was able to repair it rather than replacing the piece. She used wood hardener, epoxy putty and a couple of small pins.

Sashes ready for priming in the workshop

Debbie primes prior to glazing

The rabbets were primed with high quality oil-based primer so that oil from the glazing putty will not penetrate the raw wood.

The sashes were delivered to Shea's Glass with instructions about which panes need to be replaced and cautioned that the openings are different sizes and are not square. Shea's did a great job; every pane fit so no recuts were needed.

Glaze
Debbie wrote the following step-by-step narrative.

Glazing putty is applied to the rabbet then the glass pane is bedded into it and gently pushed down.
Next, six glazing points per pane are pushed into the shoulders of rabbets.
The sash is flipped over to trim the putty that squeezed out and whiting is lightly brushed on the glass to remove oils. The window is flipped back over.
Glazing putty is tooled onto the window pane to form a bevel that starts from the arris of the shoulder of glazing rabbet, is smooth, and has neat miters at the corners. Try it sometime if you think the videos online make window glazing windows look easy!
Finally, whiting powder is gently brushed over the glass with a dry paintbrush to remove putty and fingerprint oils. It also helps the glazing start to form a skin.
Then the window is set aside to skin over for at least a month because it's humid here in Florida.

Paint

Debbie made a test piece to figure out the best sequence of steps using this particular primer and finish paint, then it was just a matter of patiently following through. Jeri Treat and Jay Bushnell lent a hand and painted a couple of sashes each.

Mask the glass leaving 1/16" for the paint to lap onto the glass and form a continuous surface with the glazing.
Prime using high quality oil-based primer.
Remove the tape.
Paint 2 coats of exterior latex paint matching the historic color of the house. Allow the paint to lap onto the glass and especially to cover the edge of the primer.
Using a straight edge, matte knife, and razor blade, gently cut a straight line in the latex paint about 1/16" beyond the primer's edge. Carefully scrape and peel the latex paint from the glass leaving a straight line.

Screens

There are only three screens for the cook's house and they were in pretty bad shape. The corners of one of the screens had broken, been repaired and had broken again. The screens were found inside the house so there was no need to document which window frame the screen matched and also no way to know for sure. They appear to have been nailed to the outside of the window frame. Debbie followed this procedure:

Preparatory steps:

Wash off the dirt and spiderwebs.
Carefully remove the half-round screen-retaining moulding to later reuse as much as possible.
Remove and discard the cut nails and screens.

Debbie repaired the broken corners using angle brackets since the wood wasn't strong enough to glue and screw due to previous toe-nails and splitting. Corner brackets have been used to repair screen doors and windows at other locations around the property so using them seems preferable to replacing otherwise sound wood.

Frames and mouldings were primed using the same oil-based primer as the windows and two coats of the same exterior latex paint were applied on the frames and moulding strips. A small amount of new moulding had to be purchased.

New aluminum screens were stretched onto the frames and secured with stainless steel staples.

Then the half-round moulding was applied to cover the staples and tacked in place using stainless brads.

A finished screen

Reinstall the Sashes and Screens

BEFORE

AFTER

When we started this project back in February it didn't seem likely that Debbie would be painting the window frames in August but of course that's how it worked out. Summer in Florida, where the humidity is nearly 100% every day. Debbie left an extra day for the paint to dry between coats and drank lots of water!