Shutters, Windows, Doors, and Porches

Shutters

Old buildings often have shutters on them. If you are lacking enough shutters to go with every window, compromise by at least shuttering all the windows on the front of the house or all those on the ground floor. In the South, shutters were used originally to shade out sun or to protect against storms. These were hung on shutter hinges and had hooks to hold them open. Such an arrangement precludes the use of screens, unless they are interior screens, which slide up and down on tracks inside the window sash so as not to hinder the closing of the shutters.

With vertical adjustment rod facing out, screw shutters securely In place so that they overlap the side window casings.

Tips on Hanging Shutters

• Hang shutters so that they cover the side window casings, the vertical adjustment rod laces the viewer.

• If you don't have shutter hinges, screw the shutters onto the casings. (Pulling nails each time you paint would destroy the shutters.)

• If the butters aren't original to the window and are too short add a strip to the top to make them as high as the window opening.

• If the shutters aren't original to the window and are too long, cut them off just under the top crosspiece. remove as many slats and as much of the sides as necessary to match the size of the window opening, and then replace the top crosspiece (See illustration.)

• If the shutter sags, strengthen it with a wire secured diagonally across the back

• Screw metal strips on the shutter hack to fasten loose joints.

To shorten shutters (A) cut side rails to desired length, and (B) remove slats to make room for the horizontal top panel; slip top panel into place and fasten to the side rails with pegs or metal corner brackets.

Windows

As I said earlier, storm windows both protect existing windows and prevent heat loss through windows that don’t fit very well any more. If you use storm windows, you will save yourself from a life sentence of window glazing, but you will. probably have to glaze some (maybe all) windows at the outset. A window with loose glass in it lets a lot of heat out of your house. A storm window over a window that needs glazing is just about as effective as a well-glazed window with no storm. You might just as well glaze the windows and save the price of storm windows if that’s all the energy savings—and comfort—you care about. In addition, a loose glass is much more likely to break than a secure one.

How to Glaze Windows the Old-Fashioned Way

1. If the glass isn't well secured in the sash, you must put more glazing points in the sash to hold the glass firmly. Formerly, glazing points were little triangular objects that only a magician or a brain surgeon could get into the wood. Now, push points have a little ledge against which you can easily push them in with your glazing knife.

2. Clean away all old, loose putty. If the old putty on the sash is firm, you need not replace it. Very hard putty that needs to come out can be loosened with a butane torch. If you try to chip it out with a chisel you will very likely break the glass.

3. Use a very stiff putty knife or glazing knife (which is like a putty knife with a 400 bend in the blade) and a good, name-brand glazing compound. Be sure the glazing compound is fresh and moist. (Never buy it in large cans because it will dry out before you use it all.)

Hold putty knife at an angle a bit flatter than 450, and press harder on the back side of the knife than on the forward side when pushing glazing compound into the area. In one smooth operation.

4. Clean the glass and sash well.

5. Prime wooden parts and allow to dry thoroughly.

6. Place a glob of glazing compound near a corner of the pane. You will discover by experience how much glazing compound you will need for various-sized panes.

7. Hold the putty knife at an angle a little bit flatter than 45°.

8. Push against the glazing compound very hard, moving it the whole length of the area to be glazed in one operation and pressing harder on the back side of the knife, with less pressure on the forward side of the knife. If the glazing compound rolls out of the space reserved for it, the surface is dirty, you aren't pushing down hard enough, or, the glazing compound has gotten too stiff.

9. To assure a long-lasting job, paint the surface of the glazing compound after it's in place. I have heard of people mixing paint with the glazing compound before glazing the window, but to me that seems like a good way to have an exceptionally messy job.

The Lazy Person’s Alternative to Glazing Windows the Old-Fashioned Way

Glazing is now sold in tubes that can be used with a caulking gun. Even with this simplified method, you must begin with a clean and dry window. Use a steady hand to apply the glazing. Smooth out rough spots with a putty knife after the glazing has dried a little.

Cracked Window Glass

Some people replace all cracked glass whether there is a piece missing or not, although actually, a crack does not let out a great deal of heat. But if anyone slams shut a window that has cracked glass, it will break much more easily than one that's not cracked. Many people so prize the old wavy glass that they are unwilling to replace it with new glass even when it has a crack. Personally, I am too lazy and too poor to replace glass that's merely cracked. If it's just cracked and not displaced, you can seal it with a drop of strong adhesive such as Superglue. Capillary action should pull the thin liquid along the crack. In many cases the crack will almost disappear.

Tips on Repairing Weak Window Sash

• If a window is corning apart, nail it back together or put wooden dowels in its joints to secure them.

• Sometimes you may have to reinforce a corner with a very thin piece of waterproof plywood.

• Even badly deteriorated sash can be used for many years if it's caulked well right in place

Tips on Protecting Stained Glass

Stained or leaded glass might need a custom-made storm window both to prevent cold coming in through the lead joints and to protect the lead. Alternatively, you could fit a piece of 1/4-inch plexiglass or plate glass over the whole window, and secure it with glazing. Do not glaze it in with such permanence that you can never get it out. In ten or fifteen years you can get a build-up of grease and dirt between the windows even when they seem to be sealed.

Be sure that the metal bars that hold the leaded glass in place are in good condition and still soldered to the lead.

Doors

Badly deteriorated, sagging, or warped doors aren't only unsightly but they are irritating to use and sources of energy loss. A variety of problems require a variety of solutions.

Possible Problems with Old Doors:

Glass Doors

If you need to replace glass in doors, you must follow a slightly different procedure than you use for windows. Glass that's set in doors is usually secured by wooden molding, tacked with the smallest wire brads possible to avoid splitting the moldings and also to make removal easy. This molding makes points unnecessary. In addition to these moldings, the glass is set in a thin coat of glazing compound, both to keep the cold out and to prevent the glass from rattling or breaking when the door is slammed. If your door originally contained beveled glass that has been broken, you should probably replace it with plain double-strength glass. Unfortunately, beveled glass costs a king’s ransom, unless you can swap something from your treasure room for glass from another collector’s stock.

To repair two separating top seams of a door, pull the parts together and hold them in place with a pipe clamp, then drill a pilot hole through the side edge Into the top rail and gently drive a glue-covered dowel into the hole.

Screen Doors

Often it's hard to know what to do about screen doors in old houses. It is unlikely that the house’s antique screen doors will have withstood all that banging! Yet old houses, which generally aren't equipped with air conditioning, often need screen doors in order to be comfortable, and I feel that the worst possible thing you could do is to install an aluminum screen door with a bright aluminum panel at the bottom.

I have had considerable success, however, in using a stock wooden screen door and fixing it up to look like an old screen door. If the new door is smaller than the opening, add strips the same thickness as the door to top and bottom, as needed. If the opening is much bigger than the largest stock door you can get (usually 3 feet), add a piece to both sides of the door in order to make the width of the two sides of the door equal. Fasten these strip additions with dowels whether they are on the hinge or the slamming side, because they are going to get a lot of hard use. To attach the strips, glue them in place, tack them on, and then drill holes the diameter of the dowels right through the extension piece into the door. Load your dowels with waterproof glue, tap them in, and cut them off. Sand the surface with a disk sander to level the door and the extension and then with a vibrator sander for a fine finish.

Ornament a newly purchased door with cutout plywood, dowels, and wood balls. The Inset Shows dowel Inserted between horizontals, with a 1/2- Inch drilled hole above, and a 1/4- Inch drilled hole below.

Most of these doors have a double crosspiece at the middle. Here is the place to insert 3/4-inch balls glued on dowels. You can get the balls, already drilled with 1/4-inch holes, in any craft store. Make your own design, but the most common nineteenth-century design was two balls on a dowel, with the dowels spaced about every 2 inches across the door. The way I get the dowels into the space between the crosspieces is to drill exactly 1/4 inch into the lower one and at least 1/2 inch into the upper one at the proper location for the dowels. Then I make my dowels 1/2 inch longer than the space between the crosspieces. Having done this, it's easy to poke the dowel up into the upper hole and then down into the lower hole and set it with glue and a tiny brad.

In one, two, or all corners of the screen openings make corner decorations. Cut out a quarter of a rim of a wheel from waterproof plywood and use dowels, fitted with balls, to make three or four spokes. Alternative corner decorations might be stylized bat wings or smaller and finer versions of the corner brackets used for the porch openings. Finally, stain the whole door with a dark stain and apply several coats of waterproof varnish. You also could paint it, but the contrasting touch of natural wood against all the other painted surfaces is quite handsome.

Porches

The most needy areas on the exterior of many houses are the porches. Exposed as they are to the elements, their horizontal parts catch both rain and snow. Good maintenance includes:

• Repairing leaky roofs

• Clearing clogged gutters

• Painting frequently

If these things have been neglected, you very likely will have some or many of the problems that follow.

A Baker’s Dozen Porch Diseases and Their Cures

If the understructure is rotten, you may be in for a complete rebuilding job. For this or any other porch work, if you must buy new wood, spend the extra dollars to get treated lumber. Whether you use new or secondhand lumber, however, make sure you stop the source of the water that damaged the porch in the first place.

In some cases there are alternatives to a complete rebuilding job.

• Double damaged joists.

• Replace a rotted place in the sill with a concrete block or brick, as long as the weak spot isn't structural or visible.

• For a year or so, until you can fix it permanently, set an extra 4x4-post on a brick.

If the floor is rotten, you may have to replace it. But if there are only a few bad spots, and they are still firm enough, you might buy some time by putting in temporary sheet-metal patches over the rotting places in the floor. Nail these down with 3d or4d coated box nails; caulk the edges and paint to match. You may also be able to replace sections of floor only. However, no fair cutting off, say, the last two feet of all the boards along the edge of the porch and replacing them. Rain will run in the new seam and further destroy the floor; then you’ll have both the floor and the understructure to fix.

(A) A newly cut block replaces rotted-out portion of square post. (B) A square “plinth” replaces rotted-out portion of hollow round post.

The problem of a few missing balusters can be disguised by removing all balusters, then re-spacing them to fill the balustrade evenly. If nearly all balusters are gone, you will have to replace them with square ones cutout of 1 1/8-inch stock. You can also cut decorative balusters from plywood using a borrowed design. Or, turnings can be purchased fairly reasonably from mail-order sup ply houses. Often, a low porch can go without a balustrade.

Balusters often rot at the bottom where the water settles. To repair this problem, cut about 3/4-inch off the bottom of each and raise the lower balustrade to accommodate the new length of the balusters.

Solid, turned or square porch posts often rot at the bottom. To repair:

1. Cut rotted part of post off.

2. Cut a block of the same dimension to replace the cut-off portion. If you want a round block, have one cut with a band saw.

3. Caulk and sand the joint well.

4. If the post is square, add a baseboard around the bottom to camouflage the addition.

5. To repair hollow round or square posts, cut off 2 to 4 inches of damaged wood and compensate for the shortened length by adding an extra plinth at the bottom and /or an extra capital at the top. Caulk and sand well before painting.

If you keep a metal porch roof in good condition by frequently painting it with a good roof paint and never allowing rotting leaves to lie on it, it will last for the life of the house.

If your roof is a deteriorated tin roof try replacing it with double- lap, roll roofing. On steep roofs, where the roof is clearly visible, use shingles or 5v metal roofing. If you absolutely can't get permanent repairs done immediately but are (justifiably) concerned about continued deterioration that will damage the floor and other parts of the porch structure, lay a polyethylene tarp on the roof and glue it down with roofing cement or, for short term, weight it down with bricks. Patch scattered leaks with fiberized roofing cement or pieces of roofing or flashing material glued in with generous gobs of roofing cement. For small leaks and obviously deteriorated metal roofing, paint the whole roof with roofing tar. For best results, the roof must be dry and hot.

For self-cleaning gutters, instead of using downspouts, simply leave one end of the gutter open and allow it to protrude 6 inches from the end of the roof. A heavy downpour will clean all the leaves out automatically. This method may cause drainage problems of its own, however. Be sure that water does not flow back in under the porch or house foundation. To avoid erosion at the point where the waterfalls, lay down a circle of stones or gravel.

Leaky built-in gutters can sometimes be fixed by adding patches in the same manner as described above for adding patches to metal roofs. If there are many leaks, cover the gutters first with plywood, then with roofing material. Install add-on gutters.

Porches need gutters more than any other place on the house, because without them, the wind will blow the drip all over the porch. Stopped-up gutters, however, are a semiannual plague, ten times as bad as no gutters at all. If they aren't cleaned, they will overflow, carrying rain just where you don’t want it, to rot and stain your porch beyond belief. Further, the gutters themselves will soon rot and need replacement.

Inadequate pitch of the porch floor is likely a construction mistake. To correct this problem, you must get to the understructure and lower the outside edge just enough so the water flows off. If you find a dip in the surface where the water settles, jack up the low place by putting a 4x4 “leg” under it.

Porch flooring has a peculiar but often unknown characteristic. Every board contains a warp, which forms a little concave trough that directs the water to the edge of the porch and prevents it from running sideways and into the cracks. This warping to provide a concave surface was assured by old-time carpenters by the way they selected the grain. Modem porch flooring is scored on the backside of the board to guarantee that it will warp correctly. If you don't use new porch flooring, be sure to observe the grain of the flooring and lay the boards with the concave surface face up.

A porch that slopes too much usually signals problems in the support structure underneath—rotten pilings or sinking brick piers. Sometimes the porch slopes so precariously, one can imagine all the furniture and people sitting on it sliding off.

The first step in solving the problem is to improve drainage so that water no longer can get in around the porch supports. With a dry foundation assured, replace all rotted wooden posts. Brick piers probably don’t need to be removed if you add shims when the porch is raised up to a proper level. A hydraulic automobile jack is usually strong enough to lift the porch. The bigger the tonnage of the jack, the better. You will know it's in its correct position when the balustrade is level, the posts are plumb, and the opening formed by the balustrade, the cornice, and the posts is square. In other words, only the floor should slope, not the whole porch. (See illustration.)

(A) A porch Is in the correct position when the balustrade is level, the posts are plumb, and the opening formed by the balustrade, cornice, and posts is square. (B) The porch floor alone should slope slightly away from the house.

Missing ginger bread, such as the small, turned balusters at the top of the porch opening or some forms of ball-on-dowel decoration, are often irreplaceable. You can sometimes cut your own decoration from 5/8- or 3/4-inch waterproof plywood, using an authentic design from another house of the age and style of yours.

Modernized porches are a different problem. You may find, for example, that a former owner has poured a concrete floor for the porch. Because porch floors made of concrete were standard on new houses built after 1920, porches needing repair on older houses often received the same treatment. These certainly are beautiful and maintenance-free floors. When the work was done as a repair, the porch area was usually filled with dirt, over which the concrete was poured. Occasionally, you will find one where the concrete was poured right over the floorboards. You may just have to live with such a modernization.

If, on the other hand, someone has added a solid, plywood- or shingle-covered balustrade, you will do well to remove it and make a new balustrade, consistent with the age and character of your house.

Perhaps no other aspect of the modernization of an old house ruins a house so absolutely as an enclosed porch. Further, such a porch often creates a dilemma: Even if unattractive, the space it provides is convenient to have. If at all possible, however, I recommend restoring an old front porch to its former usage. Boost up your courage, take a deep breath, think happy thoughts—and swing a pickax or a digging bar through the front wall of that porch addition and get rid of it!

Tips on Raising the Roof

If you need to raise the porch roof to take the posts out for some reason, you can usually jack it up with the use of 4x4s and a hydraulic automobile jack, mounted on a plank so the weight doesn’t press down all in one place. The 4x4s can be made by doubling a 2x4. Two 4x4s in the general proximity of the original post, leaning toward each other and toward the house should easily hold the roof up while you take the post out.

If the porch roof isn't too heavy, you should be able to lift it high enough to replace posts or flooring by following this procedure:

• Place one end of a 4x4 under a convenient lifting place. The other end should rest on the ground about one foot out from where it would be if it were straight up and down.

• Put a solid heavy plank under the ground end. With the biggest sledge hammer you can find, drive the 4x4 into a vertical position.

Posts, Railings, and Decorative Trim

Train your eye to the appropriateness of trim for different styles of architecture when you must replace missing elements. If you have to improvise,

• Replace hard-to-find turned posts or hollow, round posts, with 4x4 posts or square, hollow posts respectively; they are cheap and easy to make.

• Replace missing or rotted railings with 2x4s or 2x6s; taper the upper surface to each side of a centerline.

• Use a jigsaw to cut your own gingerbread from 3/4- or 5/8-inch sanded plywood; it's cheaper and actually better lasting than the solid boards used in the past.

Other Tips to Save Time and Money on Porches

• Always keep your porch floor painted and it will never rot. Paint that's worn down to the wood is a sign that you need to roll a new coat of paint on it.

• Give your porch floor only one coat of paint the first year. Add a second coat after one year and a third coat after two years.

• Instead of using a brush, roll paint on porch ceilings with a long napped, fluffy roller cover. You’ll save time and mess.

• If your porch posts and balusters have so much paint on them that it cracks and chips off before the rest of your house needs painting, touch up the bare spots with primer. If you tint the primer to match the finish-coat house paint, you may be able to avoid a final coat until your next serious paint job.

• Keep saucers under your hanging porch plants, or hang plants from the outer edge of the eaves, so that they don drip water onto your balustrade and floor, causing rot, peeling paint, and mildew.

• Keep wet and rotting leaves out of your gutters and off of your metal porch roof.

• Plant foundation shrubbery considerably away from porch so that even when the plantings grow you can walk behind them. Close shrubbery causes splatter and dampness, both of which rot porches.

• Keep the underside of your porch enclosed. You don’t wan cats and dogs and other freeloaders to live and play there Enclosure also gives your house a better, more finished appearance. If the porch crawl space does not connect with the rest of the basement, use lattice, which looks great and is quite cheap Otherwise, use bricks or waterproof plywood For brick or plywood enclosures, be sure to leave some vent space, preferably screened.

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