American Bungalow Magazine?

Some of you might remember this door from an earlier blog. It used to be white with a plywood panel where the glass panes are now. I stripped, stained and resealed it. Looks great. You can see the earlier blogs here, and here.

The owners, Alan and Sherry Badia, commissioned me to replace some jalousie windows with some more authentic looking historic wood windows.

Shown in the middle picture are three casement windows with antique glass. They have bronze hinges and brass fixtures.

The bottom picture shows both sets of windows I installed. The others in the right of the photo are five over one double hung windows.

American Bungalow Magazine is scheduled to do a photo shoot of the house and I can't imagine why some of our work wouldn't be included. That would be great. Everyone say Cheese!

Sparks Glazes Windows

One service we offer at Quillian Craftsman, LLC, is the re-glazing of your historic wood windows.

Sparks will tell you that it's not as easy as it might sound. Most of the work is in the preparation. Do all the necessary prep work and it goes pretty easy.

It's actually a dying art. With the influx of aluminum and vinyl windows, the need for such a service has diminished.

Diminished to the point that no one really does it anymore - except for us - Sparks really.

Shown in the picture left, Sparks is working on re-glazing the windows at our current project, Eric Krause's pre-depression bungalow in Seminole Heights. I think he has the radio set to classic rock.

Wrapping up the Porch Sitting Rail

Jason, an associate carpenter sands the beam end, dressing it for paint.

The picture below is the corner of the porch, woodwork complete.

All that's left is to rebuild the deck. We'll do that in a week or so.

Second Video Installing a Sitting Rail

Here's the second short video of the Quillian Craftsman guys installing the porch sitting rail.

Video of Installing A Porch Sitting Rail

Here's the first of two short videos taken while installing the porch rail at the bungalow rejuvanation

Front Porch Sitting Rail Replacement - Early Bungalow in Tampa

Bigger and heavier than they look, we used 8x8 yellow pine timbers for the sitting rails we replaced on Eric's bungalow. The first picture shows an original beam end salvaged from the front porch. We incorporated it into the repair to maintain some authenticity.

Second picture shows an enormous saw that one of the guys used to saw the timbers. Scary to hold and to handle, I tried it out myself and got an adrenaline rush.

Third picture shows a mortise (the square hole) where the beam end attaches to the main beam. The background shows some of the cuttings and drop offs created by our cutting activity.

Finally, the last picture shows a sly snapshot of Brian, one of the carpenters recently hired. He wasn't looking (or so I thought) when I snapped it. We were all standing in a group. My camera was about waist level and pointed up. I pressed the button. What can I say?

Casement Windows Again

Here's the upstairs casements a couple of days ago on the 5501 Seminole Renovation. Fully trimmed out now, I have yet to take pictures of them currently.

The project is moving along well, as you can see. Drywall is up in this upstairs, the baseboards are on, the outside shell is about buttoned up.

Two last "big" projects are the back and front porches. Beyond that we have a couple of doors to hang and some trim to dress up, replace or install.

Test Logo

This might be our newest logo.

Kaeden and Daddy on the Woodpile 2

Kaeden and Daddy on the Woodpile

Kaeden inspects work at the Victorian Bungalow Restoration

"Do you want to go see Daddy?" Kaeden laughs and flails his arms in an excited fashion - 'cause although his vocabulary doesn't allow him much past one or two syllable words yet, he sure knows what it means to go see daddy.

So we let him roam around a bit at the end of our workday. Rolling up, cleaning up, Kaeden wanted to see what we had been up to.

"Are you taking pictures daddy?" He got real close up to the camara before he darted off to see what else he could get into. Kaeden walked around to the back and helped us clean up a bit, played in the sawdust pile we created underneath the table saw, ate some dirt and basically had some good clean fun.

He made sure that every carpenter on the job was where he was supposed to be and doing what he was supposed to do.

He's really grown a lot since he first started coming around. You can see his original first day on the job by clicking here.

Daddy's also lost a lot of weight since then too.

Victorian Bungalow Restoration in Seminole Heights 2

Aluminum siding covering the whole house brought along some special needs. Another piece of woodwork they didn't want to go around and consequently removed, were the cornerboards.

Stripping a house of so many details just to put on aluminum siding is akin to stealing someone's identity. And for what purpose?

One amazing thing to see about this house is that it only has one coat of paint on it. Underneath the paint, the wood was once stained. So you can sort of see the progression of thought. Perhaps they lost interest in the look of having their house stained, perhaps not wanting to do the maintenance required to keep it up. They ended up painting it only to lose the original stain forever. Then what? It came time to paint it again and they didn't. Why?

Well, on a house like this with so many details, painting it would be a major undertaking, right? Not if you keep up with it over the years. Painting becomes most laborious having been neglected for a long period of time. Painting a house such as this Victorian bungalow is a prime example of the most challenging type of house to paint - mostly because it needs so much just to catch up with where it should be.

So instead of keeping the details well painted, someone opted to install aluminum siding, probably under the pretense that it would last forever. The aluminum siding might last forever, but really it speeds up the house's deterioration rate. So the new siding would be good, but the house underneath would fall apart.

So we jump in to save it. Some of the house parts have already deteriorated beyond repair. Other parts were removed to simplify instlalling the aluminum, like the beam ends we replaced earlier, shown in the bottom picture.

We breathe new life into old houses, awakening the old soul who may have been asleep for half a century. Once awakened, we clothe it in garments fitting for a such wise old man. Once dressed up and alive again, we can kick back and take in the history of such a wonderful old soul.

Brackets on the Victorian Bungalow Destoyed by Aluminum Wrapping

Some of the brackets on Eric's Victorian Bungalow in Seminole Heights are in need of repair. Previously covered in aluminum, water got in and wasn't able to escape. Worst of all, these brackets have a lot of exposed end grain, which just sucks up the water. Without a way to escape it becomes a breeding ground for mold and wood eating fungi. Long story short...

Aluminum siding is dumb.

Notice the new wood trim on the opper picture - that's the result of putting on aluminum siding as well. There was a time when the window header trim went all the way around the house, but the aluminum people cut it off instead of going around it.

Exposed end grain especially needs to be sealed from the elements and wrapping a house with aluminum forbids it from happening ever again - unless you take it off like we did. Now that it's off there's a lot of catching up to do from years of neglect and lost maintenance.

Casement Windows Installed on a Victorian Bungalow in Seminole Heights

Shown here are the casement windows after they've been installed. Eric Krause has painters ready to put a coat of primer on them to protect them from absorbing moisture.

You can't really tell from the pictures, but we used antique wavy glass in these windows. The wavy glass really helps them to feel authentic.

Casement Windows for a Victorian Bungalow in Seminole Heights

There's a lot to building a window, so I put on a few pictures to give you an idea of what's involved in putting some casement windows together.

First we start with the sash, which we make in my shop. We have specialized tools and set ups that simplify putting them together. At this point, it takes approximately one hour per sash. Depending on the work load, we'll put the glass in ourselves or outsource that step to Acme Glass on Nebraska and Osbourne. Windows are primed before glazing the glass in.

A casement window operates basically like a miniature door. It has hinges, sits in a frame and locks. Mine have weatherstripping all around the same way a door does and can be weather tight.

When I am making a set of windows like I've done for Eric Krause's Victorian bungalow, I make a special hinge jig specific for the windows at hand. The jig allows me to get the hinge spacing exactly the same on every window. My clients like such conformity.

Shown at the left is the jig attached to the window sash. I attach it firmly in place with small screws and then use the jig as a template to rout out the mortises for the hinges. I do them all at once so they all come out the same.

Once all the sash are routed for the hinges, I use the same jig to rout the cases for the hinges. It's really a simple process. The hardest part is getting set up accurately, which can take a little bit. But once your set up, you can pump out a lot of production in a minimum of time.

After everything is routed, I install the hinges on both the case and the sash then put them together. If I've done everything right I get to stand back and smile, admiring them before I put them in.

Victorian Bungalow Restoration in Seminole Heights

Eric Krause first asked me to make casement windows for what used to be an upstairs sleeping porch. It was closed in a long time ago, given a bathroom and a window unit air conditioner. Oh yea, lets not forget the jalousie windows. I guess that kind of tells you about the era the changes were made.

He's asked me to do several things since and the project has turned into a complete renovation/restoration. We restore what we can and renovate the rest.

The house was previously covered with aluminum siding, which was taken off. Taking it off exposed numerous issues we need/needed to deal with to bring the house back to pristine condition. Much of the siding needed to be replaced, windows restrung, roof brackets repaired - lots to do.

Shown in the pictures at the left is the completion of what we originally were commissioned to do. We still have a couple of weeks of work left. I'll post some pictures of the work so you can see.