Another one of our big projects which was just completed (sort of, I’ll explain in a moment); the completion of the front portion of the bay windows. With that, it was time to tear down the scaffolding.

As you know Paul has been working on the scaffolding rebuilding the bay windows from top to bottom. He started by removing the old deteriorated rusted roof, applying a new one, then removing all paint on the front sections (each crevice, piece of trim, etc…) and taking it completely down to the bare wood. He then sanded, sealed and repainted for a crisp clean look.

Not only did this home have beautiful windows but it also originally had brackets around the top, as part of the exterior crown molding. Many however were missing or had rotted away. Our goal is to make this as original as possible, which means keeping the brackets that were still intact as well as finding replacements. Trying to find the exact style and a set of 4 would have been a true challenge but luckily Paul’s cousin, Brian who lives in Tennessee and owns The Grit Shoppe, was able to step up and help.

Paul took Brian one of the surviving brackets and using it as a model, Brian created a new set of of our needed brackets in wood. They arrived this past week in the mail and that was the last bit of work to be done on the front section. Paul climbed back up, added the brackets and finally, the scaffolding came down! Fortunately the scaffolding went down much quicker than it did going up, as you might imagine. Even so, it took a few hours to pull it all down, but it’s done. Now everyone can see how beautiful this bay and the house will be.

Obvious note needed here: with the scaffolding we literally could not reach to the sides of the bay, therefore the work that was done was only directly in front on the flat facing forward surface. We will next put the scaffolding back up, and start to tackle the left side of the bay window and then finally the right side will be done. With the scaffolding removed in the front, this now allows me to work on repairing the mortar down below and paint the bay window portion of the foundation (coming soon!).

This past week both cellar windows on the left side of the foundation were also completed and those went back in. Just as before, these are the original windows that I removed, sanded down to wood, removed the glass, cleaned the original wavy glass, reglazed it and finally painted and put back. We made sure to use the original hardware after a good vinegar cleaning to remove the years of rust. With a good scrubbing, fresh coat of paint, the hardware is also back in along with the windows. We now have a completed painted corner.

Below are a few photos of our project ending week, at least for a few items.