Sunday, August 21, 2011

This Weekend's Projects

We're told our dumpster is leaving on Monday, so this is our last chance to throw out large items. We decided this would be a good opportunity to remove wavy glass from some of the old wood windows removed from upstairs. New glass costs something like $10/square foot; we need 42 square feet for our leaded glass project. Spending several hours removing glass from 12 windows seems worth the effort to save $420.

Jeff has figured out the heat gun helps soften the glazing and speeds up the removal. So far, he's finished about 6 of the 12 windows we need. He'll probably get through most of the rest of them if it doesn't get so hot again today.

It does seem a shame to send the old window frames to the landfill, but the salvage places around here won't take them. And we don't know what we would do with them. Though, we might hang onto a few of the same-sized ones to see if they would work in cold frames for the garden. We would obviously have to put glass back in them. But it's easy to get large pieces of modern glass for free from craigslist.

Sharon found another paint stripping project to work on. When sorting through windows, she found a framed mirror in amongst them. She thought it might work above the sink in the basement bathroom so she spent some time yesterday stripping that. The paint on it is really tough. It was pretty resistant to the heat gun and she was worried about cracking the glass if she set the heat level too high. It took three passes with long soak times with the chemical stripper to get most of the paint off the front. The edges still need to be finished.

Unfortunately the joinery is not so well done, the corners don't quite match. But this should work at least temporarily until we can find a better solution. And it feels good to reuse another item removed from the house before the remodel.

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