I'm working from home at the moment restoring windows.

The first job was to sand off the last remaining smears of paint on the second sash.

Next I wanted to move the window frame on to horses to start paint stripping.

For this I needed my special trolley which was out on site.

I made the trip and picked up a number of tools as well as mowing the front lawn.

Once back home I could not procrastinate any longer and had a go at glazing the first sash.

I had been putting this off for as long as possible because it is a new skill I have to acquire.

I have priced up glazing at $100 per sash or $400 per double window so it is obviously a job I have to take on myself.

I have been watching a number of U Tube videos on glazing so I at least have a theoretical knowledge of how to do it.

The only putty I can easily obtain is the old school linseed oil variety.

I purchased a putty knife as well - I just looked for the same design as shown on the small tub of Selleys glazing putty.

I made a few mistakes on my initial try.

On the tub it says to throw away the crusty top layer. I did not notice this instruction and instead kneaded it in to the whole mass.

This meant that the putty was a bit dry and tended to feather and crack a little. So I obtained some food grade linseed oil from Linda but probably added in too much. I also used some on my finger to run along the beads I had completed and smooth them off.

As a result, my first effort has way too much oil in it and is still tacky several days later.

I also had trouble pulling the glass edge of the putty in to the right place. I either ended up with a noticeable border of putty when viewed from the other side or exposed the prongs of the glazing points.

Also, using the standard glazing knife, all the excess putty gets thrown down on to the glass. I notice in the video that by using a flat, almost parallel knife he was able to eject the excess putty up on to the timber face.

By doing this, he was able to clearly see the edge of the shoulder through the glass. I'm still trying to achieve the same effect - I think it is possible if during the tooling step I pull the bottom edge of the putty to be almost on its final position.

Sunday

No movie today because I want to make more progress.

We had breakfast at a local café and then once home I put about 2 hours in to raking up leaves and mulching them (this is another project running in parallel with the window restoration project).

After this, I created some more pine wedge and glued and wedge the second sash back together.

This did not go as smoothly as the other day and soon I was swearing and throwing various tools on the ground.

Next, with Linda's help I was able to load the window frame on to the trollery and set it up on horses.

I removed the last of the beading and then a layer below that (probably went a bit too far).

Then during the afternoon stripped the paint from one side. I am only treating half the window as all my work so far is on spare test pieces.

Because it was a fine, breezy day I was able to use the Methylene Chloride paint stripper.

This is dangerous stuff and should not be used in a confined space. Also, it eats through even the best respirator cartridges in 40 minutes - so a face mask is pretty much a waste of effort.

From my reading I have deduced that it is best used out in the open on a windy day.

The advantage of this nasty stuff is that it works very quickly - by the time I have finished applying it to one end of a piece of timber it is already starting to bubble up at the starting end.

I'm getting reasonably skilled at the paint stripping task and I can fairly quickly strip down to raw timber with just a few smears of the original paint with the minimum of fuss and mess.

After washing off the stripping compound and allowing the timber to dry, I can then remove the last trace of paint with an orbital sander and manual sanding while releasing the absolute minimum of lead paint.

Monday

Back to work today so I did not have any chance to work on anything during the daylight hours.

However, in the evening, I brought the first sash inside, laid some newspaper on the table and glazed the second panel in the comfort of our dining area.

I was concerned that it would stink up the house with the smell of linseed oil but Linda said she could not notice any smell.

I'm pleased with the outcome - this means I can do something useful in the evenings instead of watching Murdock Mysteries. On a working day I can only snatch 15 minutes here or there during a a break from coding. This is not enough time to "get in the zone" to do a task that I still finds need a lot of concentration. In the evening it is a different matter - I can take as much time as I need.

Tuesday

I've been a bit frustrated with the rate of progress so I decided to take Tuesday off and concentrate on processing the second sash and window frame.

This gave me the chance to walk down to Dome for my morning cup of coffee - as the weather warms up I am working towards improving my fitness.

The first job was to route the grooves for the spiral springs in to the second sash.

This was a bit disappointing - I am using a very small router to do the job and doing multiple small runs to avoid straining it. However - the routing bit seems to have very quickly blunted in the hard jarrah. Also the bit came loose and chewed up its shaft and the router housing slightly. I am going to have to sort this out with some fine jewelry files. Also I will have to find out if it is possible to sharpen a router bit.

Once the routing was finished I was able to prime one side of the second sash.

Next I flipped the window frame over and started to strip the multiple layers of old paint from mainly the internal sill.

Somehow, combined with painting the other side of the sash, this took most of the day.

Around 5.00 pm I stopped to mulch up a pile of leaves and twigs I had raked up.

Then, once it was dark, I turned on the outside lights and was able to patch up the holes in the side of the window frame that were originally occupied by coil springs. ( I have enough coil springs to renovate a single double window but run the risk of eventually being unable to find replacements - hence I am converting the window frame and sashes to spiral spring balances)

The next job is to bog this up and sand it back to tidy up the surface.