Early last month, Abatron, Inc. hosted a workshop in Kenosha, WI to help promote and teach the craft of restoring wood windows. Presented by Steve Quillian of Wood Window Makeover in Tampa, FL, the workshop aimed to empower all in attendance to be able to confidently give wood windows the maintenance and makeover that they need from time to time.
Quillian has been restoring windows for over a decade, and Abatron has been manufacturing products vital to the restoration process since the early 1980’s. Teaming up for the workshop, they brought together over 25 people from 8 different states to learn the process of window repair. The workshop was designed as an introduction to the knowledge and skills needed to be able to repair a window with confidence.
The crowd included historic-home owners, property managers, maintenance professionals, and concerned community members hoping to make sure that the windows in their community remain intact. Also in attendance were craftspeople hoping to compare and contrast their restoration techniques with the ones that Quillian employs for his projects.
Although the day flew by rather quickly, Quillian was able to school the attendees on what he calls the “mechanical makeover”. This process includes everything you need to know in order to make the window functional again…aka, go up and down. The class began with an introduction to a double hung window and its parts and then moved quickly into the basics of breaking through layers of paint and caulk. Once we were able to disassemble the window, there was a natural progression into some basic restoration skills, including replacing sash rope and retying the knots for sash weights.
The afternoon portion of the workshop included a lesson on tools and what Steve calls, “micro skills”. These skills are the details that are learned and built upon once the basic window anatomy is understood. We covered things like safe paint scraping, glass cutting, applying glazing, and making epoxy repairs. These skills are all fairly basic, and once they were demonstrated, the workshop attendees were quick to jump in and try them out on their own.
Window repair is in high demand and learning the basics empowers us all to preserve the beautiful historic windows in the buildings that we love. For more information on the window restoration process, please reach out to us at Abatron or Steve Quillian at Wood Window Makeover. Who knows??- Before you know it, you could be saving your own windows or even “making cash with window sash.”