My old house came with plenty of windows that were stuck. Some of them were painted shut so tight there is no going back. Some of them were just stuck because it is an old house, and these things just happen. These are the windows that give me hope.
Recently I really wanted to get one of these windows open, so I Googled how to do it. All I needed was a hammer, a putty knife and a short two-by-four. The hammer I already had. The putty knife was about $10 at my local hardware store.
I had to be careful not to hit the glass: I stuck the putty knife in the very small space between the windowpane and the sill. I gently tapped the handle of the putty knife with the hammer until it couldn’t go any farther. I did this all along the sill.
Once I did that, I laid the two by four down on the sill and gently tapped the edge of it with the hammer to loosen the windowpane. I gave the window a push and it opened. It didn’t take that long, maybe five minutes at the most.
I’m looking forward to nice cool evening breezes coming through my windows this summer.
Lisa, an Avista customer, bought her 1910 house because she loved the old-world character, some of which doesn’t make her house very energy efficient. Lisa is sharing her experience on taking some simple do-it-yourself improvements to inspire others to do the same. You’ll find her stories right here every Tuesday morning.