The windows during the restauration

During the restauration/renovation of a window, there is finally the opportunity to look under the layers of paint and that doesn't exclude surprises.

This happens often especially if they haven't been taken care for for a long time, but things that look solid at first glance, but not be real!

Here comes, but a bit scattered, a collection of pictures sent by our carpenter while he was fixing our windows. Some pictures show the "nude" window and its problem, some other shows the reparation made. 

One of the windows, before the first inspection

And after

A close-up

One can guess the damage by looking like this

One of the first "surprises"; but quite to be expected. Some wood that is not really in good state anymore

Not the best state for this piece of wood, probably a "sidostycke", one of the side pieces of the window

Another view of the piece

Not so much left of this "gångjärn"

After removing the "hornjärn", one can see what is left of the wood underneath

This seems mildly better

It doesn't seem like there are many windows that are in good state

Window #5, with "spröjs". Can that piece of wood be saved?

It seems that the combination of modern paint ("plastfärg") and the "hornjärn" has been lethal for most of the windows. 

And more

Another one...

What does this teach us? To not use plastic/water based paint!

They never end

Again

The marks of the "hornjärn"

This window had a couple of nails holding some things together (!!!)

The "hornjärn" on the left is probably the style that is original for our house. But when doing reparation, they often didn't bother to search for the proper pieces and took whatever was available. The one of the left is more modern and probably from the 40s/50s. 

The beauty of finding the original color (sadly a darker red than the one we have picked) under the layers of color. 

Beautiful reparation

Most of the windows required reparations

Seamless work

New "gångjärn" is placed on the new wood

The reparation is minimal and one tries to preserve as much as possible of the original wood

Even some wood that doesn't look healthy is often in better state than it looks

It is important to try to use wood from slow growing trees to guarantee more robustness and quality

After all this work, there is still plenty to do. Mostly painting and putting the putty.