It has been said that the windows are the soul of your home.  So choosing someone to restore that "soul" is an important decision.  I take pride in every window that I work on, and look forward to interesting projects, and interesting people.  

When you "restore" something, you want to make it look and work as it originally did.  Have it function as it once did, and use as much of the original parts as possible.  Like the old growth wooden sash, antique glass, hardware, window weigths, wheels, etc.  What we do at Jung Restoration is re-use all of those things, and if they are missing or in poor shape, we recycle wooden parts or antique glass from donor sashes, and incorporate them into your original window.  This keeps your window as original as possible, and also keeps old sashes, window weights, and wheels out of the local land-fill.  

Steam Stripping

We use the chemical free Steam-Stripper to loosen and un-harden layers of paint, and glazing.  The Steam-Stripper was invented by Marc Bagala of Bagala Window Works in Portland, Maine.  I had the pleasure of working with Marc as an apprentice for nearly two years, and during that time I learned the building blocks of window restoration, and window steam-stripping techniques.  

How does it work?

The Steam-Stripper heats up within 20-30 minutes to a temperature that you can set, and can go as high as 206 degrees.  After it has reached your desired temp., you place your sash inside the rectangular box and let your windows "steam" for 10 to 15 minutes, depending on layers of paint and glass considerations.  Upon removing them from the box, you scrape off as much paint and glazing as possible before they start to re-harden.  The glazing does this the quickest, as it’s not uncommen for glazing to re-harden within 5-10 minutes of removal.  But, you can always keep you sash in the box longer, or rotate sashes in and out which maintains your productivity.

Why use Steam for stripping windows?

Steam is so much safer and enviromentally friendly than using harsh, terrible smelling chemical strippers that really don't work that well.  Steam is easy to produce, and is incredible effective as a removal agent.  You are heating the paint and glazing to a point at which neither want to stick to the wooden sash anymore.  Meanwhile, the sash is not getting "soaked" with chemicals, nor is it water logged after steaming.  In fact, you can power and hand sand sashes that were steam stripped 12 to 24 hours prior.  Pretty amazing.  Another nice thing about using steam is that it keeps the dust down to a minimal amount.  When you are dry scraping lead-based paints you create very fine toxic dust, but when you steam a sash and then scrape it, the dust is contained by the moisture (think wet dirt road).  The lead dust is still there, but at least it is not floating around in the air for you to injest.






More to come, including:
- Power and hand sanding
- How we repair wooden windows
- Glazing of antique glass
- Priming and painting
- Metal interlocking weather-stripping