As part of the house painting process, we've been slowly removing the storm windows so we can get in and paint the mullions and sashes that have long been languishing away under there. And by languishing away I mean disintegrating. Compared to the siding on the house which has been in surprisingly good shape for something that's been covered up for 50 some years, the windows are in TERRIBLE condition. At some point we are going to need to go around and re-glaze ever single pane. We have a lot of windows, and each has at least 12 panes so, yeah, it's going to be a big job, and not one we are willing to tackle this fall.For now we are painting the glazing that remains to help stabilize it and giving the windows a good wash. Because on top of really needing to be re-glazed, they really, REALLY, need to be washed. For the past year I've been moaning about the state of the windows. I wash the insides every week (ok, Evie does most of that job, what can I say, the kid loves to wash windows, more power to her!) and I've done the outsides a few times with one of those attach-to-your-hose window cleaning things, but ugg, they are still disgusting. If I were a gambling girl (and I'm not, I have an alarming habit of looking at a lottery ticket or a slot machine and thinking "now I could use my money on that and maybe win a lot but probably loose it all, OR I could just go buy some shoes with it) I'd bet that the windows haven't been cleaned since the storm windows were installed. They aren't the horrible silver ones but are a pretty decent white aluminium, so they aren't TOO old, but still. I mean yuck. It's obviously been a very long while.
Sunday I scraped the paint slopover from the glass (on the window that I painted, which has very little slopover. Unlike the window Will painted which is pretty much all paint now, I'm dreading tackling that one!) and washed. And washed. And washed. And it really was disgusting. But wow, does it make a difference. I've already washed the storm window that goes on it but we haven't put it back up yet, in part because it's so nice to have such a sparkly clean window to look out of each morning with no double pane or screen to block the view. I suppose I should get the clean storm window up over the clean window before either gets dirty again, and I should probably also move on to the other windows instead of just staring out the one clean one, but that would mean tackling the gooped on paint of Will's window. Or worse, taking three more windows off the next side and starting the whole process over again. Sign, little steps...
Is it wrong to be so happy about clean glass??