The start of the big project.

Mr. H's big project - where we started.

Summer 2015 was spent working on the house. You've seen the garden and landscaping work (which was fun). Mr. H spent most of his time working on other aspects of the house over the summer.

Where we started:

Here's a shot from early this year, showing the windows of the living room. From a distance, they look good. Boring, but fine.

One of the things we really liked about the house when we were house shopping was it retained so many of the original features: 

• Original built-ins with stained glass windows? Check.
• Original wood double-hung windows with leaded glass? Check.
• Original hardwood floors? Check. 

What's not to like?

Up close, the problems are readily apparent: the storm windows are severely weathered, the result of 25 years of non-maintenance; window sills, brick moulding, and other wood trim is weathered and in bad shape; and nearly none of the caulk is in good condition.

Here's a diagram showing parts of a window that are discussed in this and in other posts:

Looking at the window in the center of the frame, you can see the stile pulling away from the window frame.

Here's even closer detail: failing paint, cracks in wood, caulk pulling away. The start of a big job.

More of the same...

Around back, the situation isn't improved. On the east side of the kitchen, the lower rail is rotted/cracked through at the vent holes...

...and the caulk has shrunk where the brick mould touches the brick. Also note that the lower rail does not sit flush with the stile on the right side.

The rain gutter downspout has significant peeling as well.

This is what we started with earlier this year. From June to October, we've been working on correcting the lack of maintenance from all those earlier years. We are thankful the previous owners kept the storm windows on the house for all those years, since the original double-hung windows were well protected from the elements. One of our neighbors confirmed the previous owners NEVER took the storm windows off to put the screens up! Even more, we are quite happy the previous owners left the wood windows in place rather than replacing them with a vinyl window with aluminum trim.

Our goal is to keep the original character of the house. We're succeeding and are thrilled with the results. Over the course of several posts, we'll show what we did and how we did it.