That's how long it feels like the window replacement effort is taking -- forever. 

And it's kind of a mental struggle right now; there's like 2 dozen individual things ongoing, but none are finished, and it's getting tough to keep track of it all and maintain any sort of momentum. 

The first window, its sashes need another coat of paint on one side, which I'll knock out tomorrow. Today, I tried throwing some paint stripper on the lone piece of the original jamb that still remains; results were kinda as I expected them to be. 

The top layers, which was modern latex paint, came right off. The brown and green, which is old school stuff, didn't budge. I'll probably leave it like that, sand it as best I can, and then paint over it. I don't need it to look perfect.

The second window, I got its sashes primed a couple days ago.

I got one of the sashes glazed today. It took a couple hours and I still suck at it. I'll get the other one glazed tomorrow and then paint them both in a couple weeks after the glazing sets up enough to allow me to do so.

**UPDATE** -- I glazed the other sash too. Didn't take as much time as the one before it, but the results are about a 7 or 8 out of 10. I'll never NOT be happy about not getting a 10, but sometimes you have to acknowledge that you're not going to master something after only 3 or 4 tries. Besides, this window replacement job is, primarily, practice for the big, main floor windows. Better to get the kinks out on the little windows almost nobody will ever see than on the big boys on the front facade.

And then there's the third window, which still has stone being repointed. 

The exterior side is done - for now - and on the interior side, I've worked my way up to the wood sill. It's come a long way from where it was, but there's still a little work to do before I can remove the existing jamb and window sashes. 

There are a couple voids on the sides that are problematic; the stone along the vertical sides of the window opening sit precariously due to mortar rot. In some cases, the mortar is almost entire gone, or, almost as bad, piles of dust. As a result, I have to strategically work my way up the sides, repointing a little, removing a little mortar, repointing a little, etc. Tearing out too much mortar, which is easy to do given its condition, could lead to stones actually falling out of the wall. Long story short, I have to do some surgical mortar replacement in spaces that are tough to reach. With the previous two windows I was able to do this with the jambs removed, but this window is the worst of the three and the jamb is the only thing holding some of the stones in place.  

Bottom right and left corners of the window -- those are the voids shown above, and that need to be addressed before I can remove the jamb. 

That's all I got for now. I really can't wait to be done with windows for a while...

As usual, I managed to take 1 big job - replacing 3 basement windows - and turn it into about 600 small jobs. I've finished a lot of the 600, but I still don't have any new windows installed so it sorta feels like I haven't gotten much done. 

I already covered the construction of the first set of window sashes, so I won't rehash that. BUT...since then, I got the glass installed and glazed, which went exactly like I thought it would: not fun. I think once I get the hang of it, the work won't be so miserable, but it's a lot like finishing drywall -- you gotta do it a whole bunch before you don't suck at it. 

First, the windows had to be primed with oil-based paint. Then, after watching a dozen vids on how to glaze windows, I gave it a shot.  

The putty was way stickier than I was led to believe it would be, which was about 98% of my problem. I legit spent 4 hours on this one sash trying to get it right, and the end result was still pretty rough. 

And, in a few spots, the putty wound up overhanging the wood glazing rabbet on the other side of the glass, which is a no-no; leaving the putty proud of the wood means the putty will be visible when looking through the window. 

The next evening, my inner perfectionist couldn't stand the results anymore so I tore it all out and, after watching another couple vids, tried again. The second attempt was, approximately, a 400% improvement. And, it only took me 2 hours, not 4. I did the other sash the evening after that and got the whole process down to 45 minutes.  

Once the glazing dries, I can get everything painted and then, finally, installed.

While that was going on, I got the glass for the next set of sashes; I got those finished up at the end of July.

It's all math, and something I shouldn't really struggle with, but with all the measuring and marking and cutting, there's a lot of room to make a mistake; somehow, I don't think I could ask for better fits on the arched sash pieces for both sets of sashes I've built so far. 

Anyhow...I need to get those sashes sanded and primed so I can get things glazed and painted. 

As for the 3rd window in the group, I started repointing the limestone about a week ago. The exterior side is done and I've moved the operation inside so the interior stone can be repointed. ​

As was the case with the previous two windows, the mortar just inside and beneath the sill is absolute garbage. Too many decades of trapped moisture turned it to dust, same thing with the mortar covered up by the window jamb sides -- which I can't get to just yet, but I will once I get the interior stone put back together, have a solid base to work from, and can remove the old jamb.

With any luck, I'll be cutting out the old jamb before the upcoming weekend is over. Glazing dry time is starting to be a bit of a concern; I need to be done with glazing all 3 sets of window sashes in the next couple weeks so I still have time, before it gets too cold, to get the scaffold up and continue rebuilding the parapet. So much to do, so little time!

On Instagram, I do this #52weeksofhome thing, which is participated in by mostly owners and rehabbers of old houses, where each week there's a new "theme" and everybody is supposed to post pics per said theme. This week's theme is "take a walk", meaning "show us your neighborhood (or street, or city, etc.)". 

As somebody whose first professional career stop was the city planning field, I nerd out on this kind of stuff. But Instagram only limits posts to 10 pics, so what I could share was a little bit limited. Luckily...I've got this blog thing where I can kinda do whatever the hell I want; here are some more pics (I'll try, and probably fail, to keep the words to a minimum).

Let's start back in 1876, when what's now Compton Heights was still considered "the country". The current neighborhood boundary is represented, more or less, by the yellow line but until Interstate 44 came through, the neighborhood extended all the way to Lafayette Avenue in the upper righthand corner of the pic below.  

Almost none of the structures shown in the above image still stand today. My house, built in 1878, juuuuust missed inclusion in the map.   

Moving ahead to 1883, due to rapid expansion of St. Louis, the area had been platted and made ready for conventional urban development. If you know where to look, you can see my little house in the map below. 

Back then, the central business district (aka "downtown") was a pretty dirty place, as were all urban cores of that era. There weren't a whole lot of rules regarding any kind of waste, pollution, or land use; in the densely populated city centers, this created a lot of situations people - of means, usually - wanted to get away from. 

Enter Julius Pitzman, a surveyor and city planner known, historically, for the development of private, gated neighborhoods and streets in St. Louis. He saw an opportunity to improve upon his previous upscale developments, many of which still exist today, and he dreamt up the development - "Compton Heights" - shown below. 

Today, in zoning terms, we'd call something like this "large-lot single-family residential". Pitzman's development was ahead of its time and called for a variety of things, such as large lots, setbacks (a specified minimum distance between a lot line and where a structure can be built), and curved streets. Ultimately, Pitzman's idea was to create an environment where residential structures and nature coexisted; typical urban development prior to this amounted to building things on top of things on top of things on top of every square inch of available land, with no thought - aside from parks - given to green space. 

The planned residential development (my house is outside the castle walls, as my neighbor and I like to say) was loaded with deed restrictions, called out in the images below.  

Today, that development is largely intact and consists primarily of very large, very ornate homes. Here are a few images of the structures in the planned development: 

There are only a couple mansions that could use a fair amount of maintenance attention. The pic doesn't really show it, but the house below is one of them, and another one I really like.

Alleys in the planned development section of the neighborhood are few and far between but where there is an alley, there are some big carriage houses. They're tough to photograph because the structures are large and the alleys don't provide a lot of room to work from, but these are a couple I was able to get halfway OK pics of.  

The alley immediately between my property and the planned residential development has been paved, but to the east and west, it hasn't. 

Outside the planned residential development but still within the neighborhood boundaries, there are plenty of other large homes and architectural gems. 

And of course there's the Magic Chef Mansion, built for Charles Stockstrom, a founder of the stove company that eventually be known as "Magic Chef", just across the street from Reservoir Park.

Speaking of Reservoir Park, that's the area that surrounds the Compton Hill Water Reservoir. A million years ago I lived in an apartment across Grand Avenue from the park and would take Roscoe over there just about every day. 

Now, it's Freckles' and Farley's stompin' grounds. The reservoir hasn't been used as a means of delivering water to St. Louis residents in who knows how long, but when it was in service, it held 28 million gallons of water. Architecturally, it isn't much to look at -- just a big water-holding bowl on top of a big hill (it's got walls and a roof now, but way back when...it did not).  

The park is kind of a hidden gem, albeit one in plain sight. It's bounded to the north by Interstate 44 and to the west by Grand Avenue, two psychological, if not physical, barriers to accessing the park on foot. The park's southern and eastern borders front the Compton Heights Neighborhood exclusively, which sort of makes it our own little place.  

As for that pesky highway that tore up the neighborhood, it was a necessary evil. The reservoir itself was spared from any sort of demolition but the northern section of the Compton Heights Neighborhood was not. ​

In the strip of green space between the highway and Compton Heights to the south, we have a little community garden; lemonade from lemons, I suppose.

That's my take on my neighborhood, Compton Heights. Big, fancy houses, a unique set of curved streets, a tower, a park, and plenty of stuff preserved from 100+ years ago. Now, I gotta stop writing and get back to work on this little thing... 

I originally titled this "Got A Window Finished", but I still have to deal with glass and paint so it's not really FINISHED finished. But the window frame is built, at least that part of the operation is done. 

Why am I building windows for the basement, a totally utilitarian space, or why am I not just buying windows? The answer to the first part is that, ultimately, I want to build windows to replace the originals on the main floor of the house and the basement is a pretty solid place to get some practice. 

The answer to the second part is that it would take a stupid amount of money to pay somebody else to make (9) 7' x 3' wood-framed windows for the main floor, and there's no good reason to pay somebody else to do what I already have the tools to do.  

All the basement windows, most of which have already been replaced once, look about like this:

The sash joints are coming apart:

The glazing is falling apart:

And even where things sort of appear to not be terrible, there are signs of deterioration; those little tiny holes are where nails were driven to keep the rail (the top, curved piece) attached to the stile (the vertical piece it connects to), and the glazing is no longer really doing its job. 

I'm using douglas fir as the lumber for the new window sashes; it's historically accurate and holds up to weather about as well as any readily available species of lumber. There's approximately 700 steps involved in building these things, but the short version starts with cutting big boards into smaller pieces that will become the sash rails and stiles:

Then it gets complicated, and the order of operations becomes wildly critical (I was reminded of this, painfully, during the first window-building effort that I ultimately scrapped). From this point forward, there really isn't any room for error.

​After a little bandsawing and a WHOLE lot of router work with this bit set: 

It's on to the hollow chisel mortiser to cut the mortises in the stiles. That's followed by some table sawing to cut the tenons in the rails, which results in this:

The tenons fit into the mortises and give the sashes some strength and rigidity. I wish I could have made the tenons a hair longer but with the tools I have and the sash geometry I couldn't really make the mortises any deeper. I felt pretty good after dry-fitting everything together (back/exterior side shown, that's the recess where the glass will go):

The trickiest cut of them all is getting that top arch cut just right. If the bottoms or sides are off, wood can be added and shaved. It's not desirable to have to go that route, but it's easy enough to do. That top curve...cutting an incorrect radius would be a disaster, which is never a good spot to be in at the tail end of a build.  

At this point I glued everything together, let the glue dry for 24 hours, shaved about a 1/2 inch off the bottoms of the sashes to get that lower rail the exact right height, rough cut the top arch on the bandsaw, literally spent about 2 hours (I really need a better jig for this) getting the router table setup dialed in for the final arch cut, crossed my fingers, held my breath, made the final cut, then tested the fit in the window jamb: 

She was a little snug, but I knew that was going to be the case. In spite of that, I was super happy with how things fit; I don't know that I could have measured, marked, and made that top arch cut any better of a fit. After some shaving on the sides and a little hinge pocket work, I got the sashes hung:

So far, so good. The glass has been ordered and I've got the glazing stuff ready to go, but I need to paint the sashes first. I'd like to get another one built before I start spraying paint, but the next one has an added wrinkle -- the arched jamb piece that I kept as-is from the original jamb, it's kinda off center and I'll have to figure out how to navigate the measuring and cutting that'll need to happen to match it. 

After that...still a long ways to go. I need to figure out how to make the brick mould that goes on the exterior side of the jamb, and then paint and caulk everything...but I think I'm off to a good start.  

I always feel like I haven't gotten much done since the last time I wrote anything, and then I go back through the pics to look for things to include in the current post and...maybe I've gotten more done than I realize. Most of it, like the post title, involves lumber (sticks) and rocks (stones).

Last time we chatted, I had finished up a couple storm window mockups and was starting on repointing 3 basement windows. The goal was to spot repoint -- hit what's necessary, leave any existing, decent mortar as is. Unfortunately, most of it wasn't decent and I decided to repoint the entire wall sections, down to about a foot below grade.

​This was the starting point...

...and I quickly wound up here:

Somebody had repointed the wall previously but it was kind of a superficial repointing and the majority of the original mortar behind it was garbage, particularly around the window, so I decided to repoint the whole wall. I had good weather, I enjoy the work (in small batches), and if done correctly, I won't have to do it again in my lifetime, so it was an easy decision.    

The OSB in the above pic is covering a small hole, where I started digging down below grade. I only dug far enough to run into the home's original "waterproofing", which seems to be a simple parge coat (google it). I try not to pick at it too much once I hit it -- it's best to let that sleeping dog lie -- but I repoint down to it.  

As always happens, if enough mortar is removed, stones start to come out of the wall as well, especially the smaller stones. I save all of them -- piled on the sill and placed on the ground -- and do my best to put them back in the wall...somewhere. 

After being able to see clear into the basement, through the wall, about as much as I wanted to, I started stuffing new mortar into the joints. It's usually best to work from the bottom up but in this case the bottom was below grade and zero fun to deal with, so I worked top down instead. You might notice the mortar color on the left side is a little different than the lower portion of the wall, that's due to executing the work over a couple afternoons and the mortar had been curing for different amounts of time. Once it's all a few weeks old, it all looks uniform.

There's a spigot just right of the window and I hadn't yet bought a new one, so I stopped with the repointing and decided to start poking around the window jamb. Like the stone, I had hoped to reuse it, and maybe just patch any small rotten sections. 

But it was all in pretty rough shape -- that'll happen when you butt wood up to masonry for about a century and a half -- so I decided to remove all of it but the arched piece at the top.

One of the helpers heard the commotion and wanted to watch, but there wasn't much to see -- the sawzalling and temporary bracing went quickly -- and before long I had the left side and bottom stripped out. 

I knew the mortar in the stone around the window was in terrible shape, that became obvious back when I gutted the "finished" basement and saw the condition things were in. I had to work from both the inside and outside of the wall, which made for a lot of walking back and forth, in and out of the basement, but the whole thing turned out pretty well. 

I boarded 'er up -- not yet ready to build jambs and windows -- and moved around the corner on the left to start tackling the next wall section.

Repointing the next wall section was pretty identical to the one I'd just completed, with one small difference: I discovered that I could get the paint off the stone pretty easily. 

I got the wall repointed and the old jamb and window out but quit taking pics of things, so let's pick up back at the first window. I built a new window jamb, which is this:

The jamb took some work due to the stone sill being a little out of level, but otherwise it was pretty straightforward. She fits snug, the sides of the wood touching or near stone and mortar were all flashed, I made sure to carve out window hinge pockets, everything is sloped the right direction, and most importantly (to me, anyhow), I achieved this: 

Again, the second window jamb went pretty much like the first one did, and the results were about the same:

That was early June, and I would have been a little farther along in the window replacement project but some time had to be spent, occasionally, away from the tools and mortar dust and long hours sitting still, chiseling away at limestone...

The best thing that happened over the past few months hasn't been the house progress -- it was seeing Farley (the bigger dog, who's all of 9 months old) finally not be timid around water. Freckles loves water and swims like a fish but it took Farley a few outings to follow big sister's lead, so that was pretty cool.

Aside from the window work, I also tackled a bunch of other ancillary projects, like replacing the dishwasher. This thing came with the house and might be about as old as I am; the amount of mouse poop I removed from under and on top of this thing was staggering. 

I also built a new miter saw station. Even though the miter saw should almost never be used to make any consequential cuts when doing high-level-of-detail-woodworking, I didn't want to start building windows without having a better miter saw setup. And, I have a bit of a storage problem in the basement; I know all too well, from experience, that building stuff is zero fun when you're constantly having to rearrange the shop or dig things out of piles or can't find a tool, so the miter saw station was just as much about storage as anything else.  

This was the old setup:

And this is the new one:

Then I started building windows. I scrapped the first effort due to too many careless mistakes, mainly me dropping window pieces and putting big dents in them. The second effort is almost ready for glue and clamps, but I'll tell y'all about that in the next post...