Restoring casement windows

A request came in recently to make a kitchen window for my lovely niece. Wisely, her boyfriend (a boilermaker) and his brother (a chippie), who are refurbishing her post-ww2 Queenslander, refused to have anything to do with the windows if it didn't involve ripping them out and putting aluminium ones in. I'd made some windows for my brother in the past - simple hopper ones to match the existing ones on his house - so I was the go to guy. Long story short, it seemed pointless building a new timber window when it would have to be the same kind of casement window as it was replacing, given the dimension of the hole in the wall. And the job had turned into "whatever you do with the kitchen window, please kindly do to every other window in the house as time permits (ie asap)." And all my niece really wants is a splash of wood grain here and there.

So I agreed to strip the windows - paint on the exterior, varnish on the interior - with the plan being to sand blast what I couldn't scrape off with a cabinet scraper, having (rashly, in hindsight) ruled out getting them chemically stripped due to cost. And now I'm at that delicate stage where if I'm going to baulk at the whole idea, the time to baulk is now, when I haven't spent much time or effort wallowing in lead paint scrapings and blastings.

I've scraped some patches off here and there, and my assessment is the windows are so weathered they barely qualify for a sand, reglaze and repaint. The timber is silky oak, but I'm questioning whether every stick of wood is silky oak - a few rails here and there look more like pine of some sort. But she wants exposed wood. The test sandblasting seems to indicate that the square edges can be preserved, but the surface becomes slightly pitted according to the grain of the wood. And some of the gluelines are gappy and black due to weathering. And the more I think about paint on the outside and varnish inside, the dodgier the finished result becomes in my minds eye.

Am I a mug to persist with stripping these things? Even after I do them, wood has to be found to replace the jamb linings/architraves, and it's not going to be silky oak, so I'm worried that even if I put in all the effort, the end result might look quite crap.

Sometimes it is better to start from a totally clean slate.

Generally it is cheaper and quicker, especially as the boyfriend and his brother will be doing the removal and installation. :D

I think you should bale out now.
by the sounds of things, you'll end up rebuilding most of the window in-situ.

Have a very long talk with the niece.
What does she really want -- timber casement windows? the look of timber casement windows? clear satin finish on the inside architraves? which would allow for a silky oak frame around an Al window.

I'd still try and go for Silky Oak if it's to have a clear finish anything less -- apart from Western Red Cedar -- will look crap or cheap and nasty

Thanks for the replies, guys, it's good to hear some opinions and get the impression that I'm not just being a lazy sod. Writing down all the issues on computer made me think that I should paint my way out of the problem - ie just repaint them, not strip them, and convince my niece that the exposed cypress pine floors would give enough of a wood grain feel to the house. But I'm starting to think I might send just the kitchen windows off to be stripped, and see how they turn out. I think I'm going to draw the line at stripping them myself. Itsa too much pain. And we'll have to look at the budget (Bro is stumping up the cash) and discuss the final finish with the architraves, etc, and if we hit on a winner with the kitchen windows we can continue throughout the house, or change our approach if it doesn't tickle our fancy.

good decision me thinks.

Years ago I sent the skirtings and internal doors from my [Sydney] terrace house off for commercial stripping. From memory the total cost was around the same as buying the quantity of paint stripper I would have needed to do the job myself -- without counting the time saving


keep posting with the results

What a difference a day makes. I just dropped off the first 5 windows at the strippers. It was $30-35 to strip each window, but then he told me for $80 each he'll strip, sand, fit 4mm glass and putty them in. All I have to do is paint and varnish them! (Although I'll probably spend some time syringing as much epoxy as I can into the joint gaps before I paint. And then there's revamping the hardware, and fitting the architraves, etc) Even if I end up having to pay for it myself, it'll be worth it.

I'll post some pics of this chap's work when I get them back next week. He said he'll probably be cursing me as he does them, and I don't begrudge him that one little bit.

Got the windows back last Saturday. Cannot complain about the job done - excellent - but there's plenty of work left to do to finish them. There are so many gaps and cracks it was obvious that filler of some sort would be required. I asked the window guy (The Strippers at the Gabba) what he recommends and am following his advice product-wise (Timbermate filler + Sikkens hpse and supernatural). Can anybody tell me, should I apply a slurry of timber filler to fill the grain, then sand, then stain etc? Or should I apply a coat of stain, then apply putty, then sand, then stain, etc?

I've already done the interior of one window set with filler first, but I figure if I'm doing it the wrong way it'd be best to find out now rather than push ahead and do them all wrong.

Attachment 379231
Attachment 379232

This is the worst one, and it's pretty bad (note the non-silky oak rail):
Attachment 379233

Of course the women have snapped us into line, and we're going with exposed wood (and not paint) on the exterior as well as the interior.

My Dad was a builder in Cairns and we installed a lot of casements in the 70's and some in the 80's. Mostly the ones we installed were made by Winkworth's in Cairns. They were all Northern Silky Oak and were painted with a good primer, undercoat & oil based top coat. Not many (read none?) were finished with clear so some other manufacturers used other materials like in your image which btw I think is Meranti for the stiles.

Going with a clear finish may look good for the first six months, so I would resist using clear and go for a nice wood saving painted finish, especially since you seem to have inherrited the maintenance role for life.

According to timber mate .. Their filler takes a stain doesn't it ? Else .. Stain and then colour timber mate to match ?

Yes, the whole clear-finish-on-the-outside idea is madness, but who am I to argue... And the handful of species the windows are made out of isn't going to bother them I don't think - they just want to see clear finished wood. Fortunately they've given the nod to painted architraves, which is a huge relief :)

I was fretting about whether the putty grain-filling was going to muddy the final finish of the wood, because once you apply it it sticks to many more nooks and crannies than you expect it to, and the light sand that I'm hoping to give it isn't going to remove much of it. But with different species and all, I guess it will all help to disguise what will nevertheless be obvious to a trained eye.

To fill the wood grain, why not use Feast Watson Sanding Sealer? It's designed to go under clear finishes.

Thanks, I'll check it out. I'm still looking for alternatives. I'm looking like spending 2 hours per panel puttying and sanding the way I'm doing it now. Don't think I can bear to do a whole house full of them at this rate!

Could you put wooden beading in instead of using putty to hold the glass in place? as you could cut lots of strips out of a single board, surely this would be cheaper if you could do this.

I used wooden beading on other windows I made once - it's far preferable to messing around with putty that takes weeks to harden, that's for sure - but these windows already have been puttied by the window guy. Putty is likely to last longer, I guess is the main positive. I just have to avoid ruining the putty while I'm trying to smother other substances on the frames.

Speaking of which, I put a coat of stain on the outside of a couple frames, and they looked ABSOLUTELY DREADFUL. So depressing - dark, wet silky oak. They looked better once dry, and even a little better after being puttied. The big question is how will they look finished with a few top coats. I'm worried about the timber putty making it look like they're not quite made out of wood anymore.

Finished result:
Attachment 381394Attachment 381395

I put the last coat on last night and they were whisked away first thing this morning, so I didn't have much time for photography. And my plan was to not take very revealing pics at any rate, given the exterior of them isn't anything to brag about. (After seeing what the large expanses of timber putty looked like under a few coats of stain on the badly weathered lower exterior of the frames, I had another go at convincing the girls to let me paint them...to no avail.) The sikkens system disguised things enough that it's not glaringly obvious that there are odd bits of wood here and there (I think the pics here are of the one with meranti stiles), but you can still see through to some nice silky oak grain (not shown in these two pics!).


Haha, have just discovered a window still sitting quietly in a corner of the shed - forgot to load them up with it. This one was the most weathered one shown in a previous pic upthread: Attachment 381390
The coatings give a bit of a plasticated finish to it, but I don't find it irritating at all. Will be interesting to see how a product developed and produced in the Netherlands fares in Ozzie sun.