Articles, Haller house By Ian Baldwin

Hi and welcome to an ongoing series of blog posts on our current job restoring windows of the historic Haller house, located right in the middle of the small town of Coupeville, Wa on Whidbey island. Located approximately 71 miles from our business location, Coupeville is known for its wonderful seafood (mussels, specifically) and charming old-timey main street lined with mostly original buildings, which now contain cute local shops. With the assistance of a state grant, the Haller House is undergoing a complete restoration and we are very excited to be a part of this project! Throughout this job I will try to regularly post before and after pictures of shop and onsite work.

Below is a documentation of the first windows we pulled. These are photos taken in our shop before any work has been performed on the sash to show their condition and work done previously from other people.

The Haller house.
Lichen growing on the putty glazing. There is no exterior paint on this sash. There should be a coat of paint lapped onto the glass to aid water shedding. The most impressive part is how long these have been neglected and yet still have held up.
Nails holding onto the muntin. This should be one solid piece and no nails should be needed.
Wood dowels hold the mortise and tenon joint together. Expansion and contraction cycles have pushed it outwards. Steel nails were later used in window production but did more harm than good over time. Wood dowels are the best possible work.
Cobwebs in the pulley plow and rope knot hole. Although there are no counter balances on this house and spring bolts were used, sash always came ready to be set up with rope and pulley.
The meeting rails on the double hung windows are rebated for weather stripping purposes. The upper and lower sash meeting rails lock together to create two 90 degree angles which slows air by 50% for each angle added.
Paint peeling from a sash showing the wood rings and old lead primer.
Algea growing on the interior side of the sash where water has accumulated.
More nails holding the muntins together. Still no paint. WHERE IS THE PAINT!!!
Too much paint. “A” for effort though.
An exterior side of a sash showing its previous neglect. The black part was behind the blind stop and has no degradation. We want all the erosion gone to give us a new flat surface to apply our finish which will result in wood loss. There is absolutely no reason for the sash to ever get to this point.
More wood erosion.
A muntin tenon sticking through the lower sash rail. This all looks pretty good here.
The fixed sash in this house are about 1″ thick. Typically all sash are 1 3/8″ thick like the double hungs in the house are. This is unusual.
A shim attached to the top of this sash because it was too short for the jamb/window opening.
Someone used a gravel putty… Not sure what it is.
More gravel putty glazing.
Here’s a good photo showing erosion. The grain protruding is known as Lignin or the late season growth rings. They early growth rings are the cellulose and have eroded away since it’s softer then the lignin. The erosion occurs from sun and water on the unprotected surface. Rot has not occurred because the wood is resistant to it as well as the wood has not stayed within the moisture content range long enough for mycellium to take hold.
a chipped stile on the lower sash.
An original spring bolt. This is how the sash are held in place. These are spring loaded and snap into holes drilled into the jamb.
The backside of the spring bolt.
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Ian Baldwin is a business owner in the Bellingham, Wa area. . After trying to make it as a professional road cyclist he decided to take his skills and passion of building, manufacturing, and problem solving and make a business out of it. In his spare time he spends time with family and friends and is always looking forward to his next traveling adventure.

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