I left off  in the last post with taking the frame apart and opening the “secret” compartment to remove the weights. In this post I will show you how I tied new sash cords (which are actually the same type of rope as a clothesline) onto the weights and then attached the other end of the cords to the double hung windows.

Be aware that these photos were taken by me while I was holding camera in one hand and with the other hand and some balancing and propping I steadied the window (which was removed from the frame – so the photos are slightly out of focus and sort of cock-eyed).

Needless to say, after straining my back while doing this by myself, it’s advisable to get someone to help you hold things while you replace your window sash cords. Hopefully you can make sense of the process that I’ve outlined below.

One: Cut new lengths of cord. I was able to figure out the length of the new cords by measuring the remains of the old ones.

1. sash cord length

Two: Tie a knot in one end of the cord.

2. knotted cord ends

Three: Tape a nail or metal screw onto the other end of the cord. This nail will help the cord drop into the window frame and fall where you can grab it.

3. cord with nail taped on

Four: Slide the end of the cord with the nail taped to it into the slot at the top of the window frame. You’ll see there is a metal roller that the cord slides around.

4. putting one end of the sash cord into the window frame

Five: Reach back into the open part of the window frame to grab the end of the cord that has a nail taped to it. Remove the nail and tape and tie the cord onto the weight that was removed from the side of the window panel. Then slide the weight back into the window frame.

5. place weight into window frame

Six: Go ahead and replace the cover to the panel where the weight was put. Then grab that end of the cord that has a knot in it and slide that knot into the side of the window. At this point, the knotted end of the cord should be hanging out of the top of the window frame. Then push the knotted cord into the slot on the side of the window that you had removed from the frame. I had to prop the window onto the window sill as I did this.

6. slide knot into side of window

Now that you have one of the window sash cords replaced, you repeat the entire process for the other side.

Want to see what my window renovation looks like? On an earlier post I was complaining about the terrible pink color of these windows (the photo below shows lots of patching that had to be done as painting prep). From left to right you can see the progress made with the window.

unpainted window

Finally - it's painted!

After all my hard work, the room looks great – here are before and after photos!

Finished room

For those of you who live in an older home, you might know about having to prop open windows with a piece of wood. These old homes use sash cords and weights to make the windows work. In my home, many of the sash cords are broken. So, I really want the windows to work properly and I’m bravely going to take the extra time to fix them.

To fix the sash cords, you have to take the window out of the frame. To do that, you have to follow these steps:

Pry off the window trim.

Step 1: Pry the trim from around the window off. Above you see my hand (with some paint still on it) where I am prying off some of the small trim around the window frame.

Step 2: Remove the window from the frame.

Step 3: Find the “secret” panel in the window frame and unscrew the two screws.

Removing screws from the panel inside window frame.

Step 4: Open the wooden panel to reveal the the cast iron weight inside the window frame.

Pull open panel inside window frame.

Step 5: Pull out the cast iron weight from the window frame.

Pull out the cast iron weight.

I’ll finish explaining how to replace the sash cord (which will be attached to the weight on one end and to the window on the other end in my next post.

Below you can see the type of sash cord to use (it is exactly like old clothesline rope). Also pictured is the cast iron weight I removed from inside the window well.

This is continued in Part 6: Replace Window Sash Cords

I have spent several days (off and on due to other work, waiting for drywall mud to dry and resting sore and tired muscles). One wall had wallpaper to be stripped off. After stripping the paper off half of the wall, I switched my plan and only stripped the loose edges of the remaining wallpaper. Then I patched those edges, as well as patching the imperfections on the plaster that was revealed after removing the wallpaper. Plus, there were gouges from all that scraping  left in the wall – those gouges had to be spackled and smoothed out, too.

Applying the drywall mud to smooth out the walls is physically easy. I’d like to think that the way I do it is artistic. Sanding the patched places is much more difficult and tiring. Fortunately 3 out of 4 walls did not need as much work. The other good thing I can report is that all this physical work made it possible to eat extra chocolate and not gain a pound!

This was the worst wall!

My hand sanding tools for drywall mud:

Hand sanding tools.

Hand sanding tools

The wooden-handled sanding device uses these screens to sand the drywall mud – the screens work better than sandpaper because the dust fills up the sandpaper and then you would have to change the paper too often.

The reason I consider patching as a sort of craft is the way I  applied the drywall mud very carefully and tried to make the edges as smooth as possible (feathering the edges to be flat against the plaster walls). Then, after sanding those edges to blend them even more with the wall’s surface and removing any other slightly uneven areas will make the patch work almost undetectable after the walls get primed and painted. Another tedious job will be working on the wood trim and the windows. The windows have a couple of colors of paint (the darker paint is from where wooden blinds used to be attached). I sanded the trim first (with one of my favorite tools – an electric palm grip finishing sander). After sanding, I used spacking paste on the window trim.

Spackling the wooden trim on the windows.

I only tolerate doing the things I don’t enjoy (such as sanding the walls) in order to get to the parts of this process I will enjoy – priming and painting. The other thing I enjoyed about doing physical work is giving myself a reward for my hard work – such as ordering take-out pizza and salad – some of my favorites!

Priming will be happening soon and will be covered in Part 5.

I wanted to continue my saga about renovating my 80+ year old home. I started removing wallpaper from one wall. I thought that would not be too difficult. I was partly wrong about that. The thing is, when you have an old house, you never know what will be under the wallpaper! I found out that part of the wall had a nice, smooth painted surface. But, another section had bits and pieces of older wallpaper that had never been completely removed.

Maybe it would have been easier to just sheetrock (or drywall) the room. I just was avoiding that due to the heavy lifting and the fact that I would need a second person to help me. The good part about using the drywall mud to smooth out the rough parts of the wall is that I can do that on my own. So for the section of the wall where I removed wallpaper, this  is what it is looking like:

Close-up of partially stripped wallpaper.

So, the plaster on the wall is rough and my scraping caused even more imperfections in the plaster. My solution is to spackle with drywall mud.

Spackling over the plaster with drywall mud.

I got frustrated with removing the wallpaper (after realizing how bad the walls were underneath it). So, I changed my plans and am kind of cheating – well, it isn’t really cheating, but I am not removing all of the wallpaper. I am just peeling the remaining edges and then I am using drywall mud to smooth out the edge between the old wallpaper and the old plaster wall.

Patching the edge of the wallpaper.

This process looks like a mess, but a smooth surface can be achieved by careful spackling – keeping the edges as smooth as possible. I’ll be sanding the areas to feather the edges of the spackle so that it will be as smooth as possible in order to do what comes next – painting!

This particular room has never been updated since I bought the house – which was a long time ago (over 20 years). The wood floors need to be refinished and the walls are the most awful color – pink. The trim is an even worse shade of pink – I call it the pepto-bismal room. Perhaps it could better be described as the pepto-dismal room. And to add to the bad color scheme, the doors are a light yellow! Plus, the room was really full of boxes and stuff:

Before Cleaning Up

So I spent part of last week clearing things out (with the clutter-removing three- part process: throw away some, give away some, and keep as little as possible). Here is that same corner of the room now (under all the junk there was a nice desk).

After Clearing Out Stuff

Three of the walls have the lovely (ugh) pink and one wall has wallpaper on it. Today I am stripping that – it’s gnarly!

Stripping Wallpaper

So, you see that the wall color under the wallpaper is ugly too. These are old plaster walls with several layers of paint (some of the paint could be over older wallpaper). What I previously planned to do was to cover the walls with a thin sheet-rock (or drywall). But three of the walls are not that bad – I am going to fix the surface using drywall mud – I’ll make it nice and smooth before I paint it.

I am posting the drywall smoothing in Part 3.

My other distraction from any artistic endeavors is the work I am doing to get rid of unnecessary “stuff” in my house. I’ve lived in the same house for a long time and things have accumulated. OK, so I am not the most organized person!  I am totally trying to clear out old stuff – things I thought would become projects and the clothes that I don’t wear or don’t fit me anymore (sigh) are being sorted out and many bags and boxes have already been given to various places that accept donations.

“Why now?” you might ask (since I’ve let things go for so long).  Well, I want to make my place more conducive to doing creative things, make a better area to do watercolors and a better home office space – and I want to start renovating and decorating the old home place. When I get the clutter out of my way, it will be far easier to fix this house up!

When I say the “old home place”, I do mean old! My house is an almost-100 year old Craftsman bungalow. It’s not the larger, fancier kind that you might be familiar with – but I love the large wood trim around the doors and windows, the higher than normal ceilings and the old wood floors.

What I am  preparing to do (after much  cleaning out and organizing) is to do drywall or sheetrock to several rooms. The old plaster walls have a texture I don’t care for, so putting up drywall will smooth it out and then I can have fun painting (and caulking – I love caulking). I am not going to be doing all of the renovations myself, but there are some parts of it that I look forward to doing on my own.

It pains me to be sorting out and organizing my many art supplies (paints, pastels, brushes, colored pencils, paper, etc.) and not have time to use them. But getting things sorted out will make it all that much better when I can finish the project of fixing up the house and start the next art project. And when I finish the part of this that is a chore, I can get to the creative part with the renovating and decorating (a different kind of painting, but painting nonetheless).

If you’ve read this post up to here, you must not be totally bored with the concept of fixing up an old house – so I’ll try to post some photos of the “before” and “after” of the rooms I am working on.  Until then, don’t let the colder weather get you down, go find some sunny, colorful paints or scrapbook papers to cheer you up! Read Part 2…

It’s not like I can use the excuse, “the dog ate my blog.”  It’s more likely that I was actually busy doing some four-letter-word activity.  Hey…I meant this four-letter-word: WORK. Then of course I might have been enjoying a book or playing the guitar. I promise I will try to put those activities down in order to communicate via the internet with the world at large from time to time.

I am excited about this new blog – I want to discuss and explore many areas of the arts (music, painting) and crafts (paper crafts, scrapbooking, digital photo editing – which could be an art or a craft), and may others. So, to try to get over the procrastination, interruptions, attention deficits, the holidays, working, playing, and other reasons for not getting this website off the ground, I wrote this first posting. I’ll end here with another famous quote….”I’ll be back.”