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dreamsharkYou 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...
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...
