Month: December 2014

Hello December!  It is about that time of the year where I start to roam about the house looking for drafts.  The colder and windier it is outside, the easier it is to find them, and with a 1905 built house, there are always plenty of holes.

Today I sealed up our big living room picture window.

This window along with several others need to be refurbished.  Until I find time or an experienced handyman, we’ll just have to make do with the ‘old school’ way of sealing up windows.

These kits are really easy to use.  Just measure out your window size, add a couple of inches of margin/wiggle room and cut the plastic.  Apply the double sided tape and then very carefully stick the plastic on.

In the above picture you can also see another project I just finished, planting a tree in our front yard.  I planted a Japanese “Kousa” Dogwood in the front and a silver linden in the backyard.

The final optional step of plastic’ing up a window is to use a hair dryer to remove the wrinkles and ripples in the plastic.

Now you can enjoy a less drafty room!

Go Green!

You may be asking yourself why we don’t replace our leaky windows with a high efficiency thermal paned unit and the answer to that is that the dollars and cents don’t necessarily add up.  Searching for the cost to replace vs repair old growth double sash wood windows turns up articles like this one (link).

Statistically, it is virtually impossible to recoup, in energy savings, the amount of money spent on replacing historic wood windows with new windows before the new windows need to be replaced.

Then there is the aesthetic concern.  I love old houses, Shae ADORES old houses, so with any home improvement project that we tackle, preservation is always a factor that is considered.

Old House Lovers, Stop Reading Now

Living in an older neighborhood, we are no strangers to modern times trampling over history.  For example, this house that is a part of our neighborhood was recently purchased for $300k.  It was designed and built by a prominent architect around the turn of the century during the peak of his career.

Five months later, the house looks like this:

What happened?  Did it burn?  No.  Was it a safety hazard?  No.  Was it dilapidated and beyond repair?  No.

Here are some of the inside pictures taken from the realtors website.

So why on earth is this charming house being torn down?  It was purchased by an individual so they could make themselves a private putting green and pretend they are putting for a green jacket.

Not every old house can be saved from idiocy, but by golly we will preserve ours for future generations.