We have three closets on the main floor of the house, and they each have a small window, one foot by two foot. The wood of the windows and window frames of two out of the three have deteriorated a fair amount. There’s evidence of water damage as well as mold. Pretty much every day when I would open our bedroom closet, my dust/mold allergies would get triggered, which makes me feel a bit like a canary in a coalmine.

A couple of weeks ago, I pulled the windows out of their frames (glad to finally have a solid super tall ladder!). Next step, I scraped the living daylights out of the frames, pulling as much paint and mold off as humanly possible. The frames are looking pretty good now – bare wood ready to paint. I didn’t see significant signs of rot in the frames, so I’m thinking we don’t need to replace the framing yet.

Yesterday, I finally had an hour available with daylight, so I decided to tackle the windows themselves. I worked with an old chisel to score the payers of paint, and to get the scraping started, then applied a belt sander (an old Sears Craftsman model that was left behind in the house!). As you can see in the video below, the sander is pretty darned effective (way less time and effort than the window frames needed) at getting down to clean bare wood.

Both windows show some signs of rot and/or deeply rooted mold, which is problematic. I went looking for similar windows at Urban Ore, which has dozens of windows pulled out of old houses. Alas, they had none that were as small as these, so I’d like to make these work if at all possible.

Some of the caulking holding the glass in place has also chipped off as I was sanding, so I need to research that a bit to see what’s appropriate to re-seal.