I’m in the process of building a home and would rather not pay those huge prices for windows. I’m considering making casement windows out of a nice hardwood. It doesn’t appear to be particularly difficult but i was hoping to get some feedback on this before going forward. The style of home is french country cottage. btw, i do have a pretty extensive workshop and do quite a bit of cabinetry.
Thanks,
David P.
Replies
No caveats as far as I'm concerned. I hate all the engineering that goes into manufactured windows, although they are likely to be a bit more energy efficient.
Have fun.
spend the money and get a guaranteed product. if you've ever toured a window factory you would realize what goes into a simple double hung.
i used to make custom screens and storms and sashes for customers with old houses, and realized that it's a whole lot easier and cheaper to just buy them.
good luck rg
Thanks, for the feedback
-DP
Hey, the guy's making casement windows and I say he can build a unit ten times better (certainly out of better materials) than any manufacturer in the business.
Put some nice, thick Reamy glass in 'em and they'll be great.
Dave, I built double hung windows for my shop. A lot of work, I did save a great deal of money. That being said, this is your house, not a shop, buy the best windows you can afford. I built 11 windows with 6 lites over 6 for each opening. Single strength glass, 6/4 luan for sash, pressure treated 5/4 for sills, luan for mullions and muntins, pine for jambs. Cost about sixty dollars per opening, not including paint and electric which was minimal I think. I am sure you would like thermopane or something more than what I used in my shop. If you pay $200.00 more or less for each window you will be better off in the long run. When you build a shop, make your own windows.
Good luck with your American style cottage ( frenchy is out of vogue )
Mike
Mike, please forgive me ignorance as I'm not really up to speed on my window terminology, in fact it really doesn't extend much past window and glass, doh! :( Could you please explain what the following are:
6 lites over 6 for each opening
sash, and jambs
mutins are the spacers between the panes of windows?
mulions are the actual frames supporting the window???
Also, I figured casement windows would be a much more doable thing then the double hungs. Those I would most definately buy
Thanks,
David P.
Edited 6/11/2003 7:04:49 PM ET by dperfe
I'd suggest that you make one window to get a feel for the amount of work involved before you commit yourself to do a houseful of them - possibly with deadlines for their completion. It might have romantic appeal to build all your own windows but it will be a lot of work.
A good window has to withstand the weather and not decay, stay airtight, be bug proof, have insulated glass or storm sash, and work smoothly for possibly a century or more, it isn't easy to make something that sturdy. Despite the high prices for commercially made windows, nobody makes windows one at a time anymore and there is probably a good reason why.
Building windows out of hardwood won't make them any "better" than building them out of the fairly traditional pine. On the outside, the sash and frames will need to be painted and in my experience unpainted or clear finished interior sash deteriorates from sun and condensation. The interior trim around the window can be hardwood for a better appearance, but you don't need to make the window itself to trim it out better after it's installed.
I'd suggest that your efforts at woodworking be devoted to areas where your custom work will be far more visible and add value to the house - cabinets, doors, built ins, trim and possibly one or two showcase windows of unique design, preferably with fixed sash which are much simpler to build. By the way, you can order premade glazed sash from any lumber yard (at laest here in New England) and build your own frames if you want.
John W.
Remember that you don't have to put cranking units on your casements and all that rot; you can simply use sash stays/casement stays to secure them in the open position of your choice (when you want them open, of course).
I'm a little more optimistic that a few of the other posters in this thread. If you have a well-equipped shop I think this is very do-able. The woodworking is not complicated. I'm not big on all the high-tech insulated glass. No, they may not be as energy efficient, but I believe that I read you were building a cottage with shop-made casements, not a 7,000 square foot, 75 window behemoth.
Get John Birchards's book(s) on building windows and doors. FWIW, I don't believe for a moment that you HAVE to paint the exterior of your windows either (unless that happens to jee-haw with your design scheme). You can tint Penofin or use clear Penofin and have a very nice, sturdy finish for exterior wood surfaces.
high quality (yes, expensive) windows are quite an impressive piece of work. I put an 8 foot Anderson Frenchwood slider in my house last year, cost me around $2,000. Damn thing must have weighed at least 450 lbs, it's a nice piece of work. Granted, this is a slider, but the windows I have bought to replace old units have also been impressive.
seems to me that if you did it yourself, and went with a gas filled double pane glass, the cost of the glass itself would probably mean you wouldn't save that much money.
Make sure that the building codes allow it. There are all sorts of rules, regulations and restrictions applying to windows nowadays regarding infiltration of air and the thermal properties of the glass. This is because windows tend to be one of the greatest sources of heat loss from a home.
If that is OK -- I would suggest using a decay resistant wood. Get straight grained stock to minimize problems associated with warp.
Before painting, apply the FPL finish. This is basically a mixture of linseed oil, mineral spirits, paraffin wax and a wood preservative compound. Tests indicate that this pretreatment GREATLY increases the longitivity of the window relative to weathering.
Stanley Niemiec -- Wood Technologist
2 cents more: DP go to a millwork showroom and look very closely at the "crack perimeter" of a nice marvin or other brand. that is the gap that should be completely sealed by weatherstripping when the window is closed and the sash lock or locking lever is engaged. there are also crack perimeters on doors and any other type of sealable opening in the exterior of your house. old double hungs are notorious for the wood shrinking and the crack perimter expanding enough to let heat out.
open and close the sash lock several times. look at how the weatherstripping tightens up when the window is shut right.
now decide for yourself if you have to have those factory tolerances. if you do, you're better off buying an engineered product that is guaranteed.
i have toured both the anderson and the marvin factories, and they are awesome by the way.
good luck rg
Everyone's emphasis on the 'thermal engineering' of modern windows is completely misplaced IMO.
What this gentleman wants to build are casement windows that replicate those found in a French country home (built a few centuries ago, I assume).
It is WAY POSSIBLE to build a home that is too tight - where not enough fresh air is exchanged. Check out the Breaktime archives if you don't believe me. I wouldn't want to live in the equivalent of a modern airliner where all the crappy air is simply recirculated. In other words, so what if a closed window does not create a hermetically sealed opening and a little air passes through?
Stanley brings up a good point about building codes and of course those have to be complied with. Beyond that, I know that an individual craftsman can build a much more attractive window than Marvin, Kolbe, and all the rest.
i agree that building codes of late have created buildings that are way too tight.
my house is 70 years old, and i would never have one built under the new codes.
in an old house, there are a myriad of places where the air can circulate properly, including the outlets and switches. still i am replacing all of the windows and doors with a more efficient units. you don't want an airplane, but you don't want an actual draft.
there is a relative balance one must be comfortable with when deciding where to tighten things up and where to leave the air circulation to nature.
we don't know where DP is building the house. if he is in a colder climate, those engineered tolerances may be necessary.
good luck rg
my house was built in 1959, when we first moved in 2 years ago the problem was that you could "feel" the cold or the heat coming through the windows. In the winter, it was too cold while in the summer too hot. I replaced about a 1,000 sq ft of hardwood floor and noticed, within 3 months, that the areas around glass were beginning to fade noticeably. We have cellular blinds, but truth is we like having the natural sunlight light the house, so they are open much of the day.
I replaced the windows and sliding doors with quality millwork, all low-e units, and the result has been a 180 degree turn. The floors have colored uniformly with no distinct fade pattern around the window areas, the southwest side of the house stays pretty comfortable throughout the year, in spite of have very large picture windows dominating each room.
as for the house being too tight (definitely not a problem with my house :), but agree it's an issue with new wrapped homes), well the windows have this fabulous feature - they open. Personally, I'd rather be able to control the rate of flow and air exchange in my home than rely on cracks and gaps. A whole house fan can exchange and circulate air within a structure more often than nature anyways.
I'm sure a craftsman can build an attractive window, I'm not convinced that many craftsmen can build a better PERFORMING window than the manufacturers, and when it comes to millwork, FORM definitely follows FUNCTION. Besides, I've built a lot of stuff and have yet to figure out how to wrap something that intricate in PVC...
Several years ago, my partner and I replaced 256 windows and 17 doors in one house. They were warrantee replacement by Marvin. These all had to be removed from the inside where the rooms were all papered with one-of-a-kind hand made British wall paper that had to be preserved. Marvin was in the process of suing the manufacturer of the wood preservative they'd used and just added the cost of the job to that suit. We were just sub contractors on the job and were "out of the loop" in all the negotiations.
The problem wasn't actually with the windows but with the humidity inside the house and the absence of any venting in a very large and wet basement. I'm sure those windows and doors we replaced are failing again. They have to, they're the weak link in the humidity problem of that house. Even if fungal growth doesn't cause the failure expansion and contraction will cause finger joints, veneer and other structural failure.
The lesson is that there's a lot more involved than just windows. I've also installed Anderson and other windows where they vinyl cladding was joined poorly and I could watch water being drawn in into the joints by capillary action. I've sealed these places with butyl but that's only the least temporary of possible cures and those windows will prematurely fail.
A couple times in the past, I've built double hungs for unusual situations in restoration work. Those times, I've installed zinc weather stripping designed specifically for these windows. They've also been double glazed with screened (to keep bugs out) vent ports in the bottom rails. The only problem that's shown up in these is that the brads I used to tack in the parting strip between the panes of glass grew some interesting rust crystals. I'd use stainless brads if I did it again. Properly made windows made with decent stock, I used old growth quarter sawn cypress, can perform as well as any commercial window. I worked with our state energy office when I did these to make sure they conformed to energy standards and, back then, we had a State tax credit for replacing old windows with energy efficient ones. Those I made qualified for that credit.
I built some casements, (8 units), from teak and white oak a few years ago for a friends cabin, he just slathers them with Thompsons once a year and the have held up fine. It was fun, but I'd NEVER do it for a whole house, not if yor time is worth anything. There is no way they match factory windows in performance. Also, material costs with good glass will make the deal not look so good. A shaper is really a help to have, but maybe a big router/table will do.
I remember building some very simple windows for my daughter's house:
6" square glass blocks four 2x5 and four 1x5 in redwood frames.
Even simple windows are more work than they appear.
David, making windows is perhaps tougher than it looks. I haven't made one for years, maybe twenty years now that I think about it. When I did I lived in the UK and you could buy lengths of standard window mouldings, such as frame, sill, sash mouldings, etc.,-- I presume you can in the US too, but I haven't looked.
The mouldings were pretty complex with lots of rebates, quarter rounds, bevels, etc., all designed to throw off water and provide better sealing, and so on. The joinery required is full mortice and tenon-- stub tenons generally don't cut the mustard in architectural features like windows that are exposed to the elements, although you might use dowels to reinforce a stub tenon here and there instead.
If you've ever made kitchen type cabinet doors using matched profile router bits to form the intersection between the stiles and rails, you'll know what a scribed or coped joint with a stub tenon is, and they're efficiently produced on a router table or spindle moulder (aka, shaper.)
In the days when I made those windows, there were two ways to do the joinery.
1. Mostly by hand, such as chopping the mortice with a hollow chisel morticer. Then forming the mostly off-centre tenons with things like a band saw or radial arm saw, followed by completing the tenon with a tenon saw and hand scribing the mouldings and long and short shoulders with coping saws and gouges. This was the method I had to use to make a custom window or two to fit non-standard openings.
2. Owning such things as muckle great single or double ended tenoning machines fitted with specialised scribing cutters to cut the requisite reverse profile at the end of the rails, and super efficient chain mortisers to rip out the mortices.
The job is certainly do-able, and if you can simplify the profiles (assuming you intend to run your own mouldings) that should make it easier, but it's not really a task I would take on lightly. If I did take it on, I'd charge plenty for it too, probably more than twice as much compared to buying off-the-shelf standard windows, ha, ha. Slainte.
Website I just didn't like being 'me', so my alter-ego is back, ha, ha.
Of course, depending on the size of the windows, there may not be a need for divided lights which would simplify the project enormously. HOWEVER, divided lights are much more attractive and individual broken panes are cheaper to replace.
First off, thanks. Everyone has been extremely helpful! This has been an excellent, highly helpful discussion. I think after much consideration it makes better sense in my situation to just buy them. I did go to several window stores as was suggested and talked about the construction with a couple of factory reps as well. There certainly are a lot of variables that go into windows. In my effort to put a lot of my own craftsmanship into this house it would be a shame if the windows became a serious detractment or blemish. I think it would be prudent to put my skill to use elsewhere, maybe just stick with the cabinetry and trim.
Thanks again for all the great input.
David
Edited 6/13/2003 12:17:26 AM ET by dperfe
Edited 6/13/2003 12:18:08 AM ET by dperfe
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