A New Window From a Very Old House!

A couple years ago the house my great-grandparents lived in was torn down.  A very sad day indeed.  At one time my mother and her family lived in that house.  Mom was very sad about it. 

This is a picture of that house being moved in by a CAT....Can you see the window??? It is on the top of the window on the left. 

My little brother, the heartbreaker that he is......took that window out before the house was torn down, and gave it to Mom for Christmas

She in turn gave it to me to do something with......Really??? What to do??  This is a picture of it before I started working on it.  I am sure there is 10 coats of leaded paint on both sides of this thing!!!

After 4 coats of stripper.  (No....I am not lying, it really took that much!) I sanded it down, and it was ready for some stain.  It really could have used more attention, but my arms were tired from sanding.  As you can see.....I was so anxious to get started staining, I just got started right away before I took my pictures!

This is a picture of all of the glass taken out of the window.  It was all covered with layers of paint and caulk too.  So, I put some stripper on it too, and washed it up, and..............

Look how nice they turned out!  Only cut my finger once!  Back to the frame....

All stained, and ready for some varnish!

How nice!

Time to put the glass back in!  Flip it over.......Yes, I know I didn't refinish the back side of the window for a reason.  I wanted to keep the back original just for the history behind it. 

It is a good idea to make a "map" of what colors go where.  Then we (Farmer Johnson helped at this point) pushed those silver glass holders into the frame to hold the glass into place.

Here is a close up view.

Next came the caulk, we decided to use clear.  Orginally it has white, but we thought the clear would look nicer from the front.

Close up of the caulk! Then we let it dry over night.

All finished!  We did make a "hanger" on the back with two eyelet screws and wire.  Of course, I didn't take a picture of that part of the process, but I am sure you can use your imagination to figure out what it looks like.

 So there you have it... A new window from a very old house! 

It will be making the trip to Mom's for her birthday in a couple days....I am so excited to see her reaction.  She doesn't know that I have it refinished.  I will post pictures of the birthday excitement!