Another homeowner connundrum - the window with no sash weight door

[dreamshark]

You know what a sash weight is, right?  You've got your old window casement made of solid oak and it weighs a ton, so there is no way to raise the window without a counterweight. So there's these little ropes running up the inside of the window frame and over a pulley and into a dark place where they are attached to heavy iron weights. This works great for about 80 years - then the ropes start breaking. To replace the sash weight cords, you remove the window casement and open up the little doors on either side of the window frame so you can get at the sash weights and replace the cords. When we first moved into this house (almost 30 years ago) I found most of the sash cords broken, and spent a week or so industriously replacing them so I know how to do this.

Then I got to the master bedroom and was stymied. There are 4 windows in that room, and none of them have sash weight doors. Some of the windows still had one sash cord when we moved in, but in the intervening years all but one has broken. This makes those windows damn hard to open, as they weigh a TON. Every now and then I take out one of the window casements, stare at the interior of the window frame in perplexity, and then put the casement back in. Really, NO DOOR.

Today I was hanging some mini-blinds in there and decided to try one more time before I screwed the blinds bracket into the window stop, thus making it that much harder to get the window out. Once again, no sash weight door. So I decided to just dismantle the damn window. Specifically I am prying off the piece of woodwork between two of the windows, hoping against hope that the sash weight for the right side of the left hand window and the left side of the right hand window are in there. More to come...

Comments

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I hope you found a way to get in there and replace the sash weights.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Well yes. That's the sash weights hanging down at the bottom of the wall cavity. The weights don't need replacing, just the cord that runs over a pulley and connects them to the window sash. The next challenge was getting the sash out. In one of those impossible chicken/egg things, it was impossible to remove the window without removing an aluminum track between the sliding part of the window and the frame. Somehow, they had managed to get a NAIL into the aluminum track in a spot that could not be reached without first removing the window.

Somehow I managed to get that nail out, with the help of a nail puller, plyers and a lot of bad language, and the window sash is out. Now I'm trying to talk Richard into reglazing the window, since it's out and all.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

It sounds an annoying lot of work!

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Wow, I've never seen the version with doors. Or read about it. That sounds extremely convenient. The way I understood it, you just had to tear the window framing half apart to get access.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

No, most of the time there are access doors. If you google "how to replace sash weight cords" you will see that the instructions always start by telling you how to remove the sash and find the little doors.

However, if you google "no sash weight access doors" you discover that there were enough windows constructed without the doors to fuel a steady stream of questions to home repair websites.

Incidentally, I discovered that our windows actually DO have the little doors, but hidden behind the annoying aluminum slide that is nailed into the window frame with impossibly placed nails. However, the one sash door that I actually tried to OPEN turned out to be nailed shut with one of the overly long nails that had been used to attach the trim. So the trim would still have to come off to get to the sash weight.

I gave up on that one, since I had managed to replace the cord on the other side of the window, and one is all you need to keep the window from falling on your head.