Those pool house windows

 We have had the pool house now ready for few years. We have even bought a mulltoa, but we have not been able to install it since we have not had windows or doors. 

The work around those windows or doors has taken simply forever. 

But we did manage to get some minor progresses on one of them, thanks also to the support of one of our neighbours. The holes were the old hinge were all messed up, so the only thing to do was to try to remove that piece of wood and put a new one. 

It seems a pretty easy task, if you have the right tools. That is where the neighbour came in place. He did have the right tool (and hence he did the job... :D)

After the neighbor's intervention

Did we cut the piece of wood right?

We put a lot of glue...

We glue

We cross our fingers. 

Now, the window is waiting patiently since forever for the next step....

Finally we can lock the bathroom door

 All our doors are hanging not straight, in a way or in another.

This has been generally ok except for one of the bathroom doors. It made it impossible to look, with of course the inconvenience of not having some privacy when in the room. 

How the door is hanging not really straight

The lock with the plate. 

It was not that many centimeters, possibly just one, but enough to not let the mechanism for locking work.

A bigger picture of the plate

One idea was of course to put more washers on the hinge, to hope that the door would lift itself up a bit, but after a quick inspection I noticed that the trick had been already used (ineffectively) and that I would have needed to put many many washers. 

The hinge

The decision was then to move the plate to match the lock. This revealed some different paint color under the bright white that we have painted most of things with. 

The hole and the signs for moving the plate

It did require some minor "digging" of the wood to move down the plate one centimeter. 

The plate after being moved. 

This took some hours of work. It was not as easy as I thought initially that it would have been. Now, finally it is at least possible to lock the bathroom door - I wonder how did the owner before us did for some many years. 

What a satisfaction when the kids try to open the door and I am locked inside! Peace!

The final result and the side effects

 This early spring  came finally the windows in place. 

I am challenging myself that I want to fix the windows frame myself, but we will see how it goes with the time this summer. I still have a pile of things to fix for the pool house that are waiting since forever...

One of the windows

Details with the nicely painted "horngäng"

When put like this, it is obvious, sadly, that the red colour we have always painted with is a bit too orange respect to the original one. That has happened because we took a window to Ottosson Färgmakeri in Genarp (one of the half moond windows) and they stated that was the closest one. It is highly possible that that window had a very bleached color. 

Eventually we will have to paint again the windows - I think that the next round we will use a bit darker color. 

Also, I have got a lot of problems with this apricot red in the pool house frames and I wonder if it is how I painted or simply how Ottossons colors are reacting to the impurities that exists in the air.

All the windows are in place

Now, few weeks back - after not so long that the windows got back in place, we noticed only on one specific window this effect:

Bleeding through the paint?

I contacted our carpetner and the thought is that the piece of wood was very rich in resin and it went just though all the paint. 

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.