Painting Georgian windows.

[Manks]

Hi All

You will be pleased to know I am sure that I have bought the windows in timber to replace the placcy windows in our Georgian cottage.

The windows have come treated but we need to paint them. I have had one man working on two windows today and he has taken a day to paint two coats on one side of each. So, effectively one window painted with two coats of primer / undercoat in one day. We have to gloss yet.

The problem is the masking of the glass before painting. There are eight panes per light and three lights per window. Two sides. So there are 48 panes per window to mask. It takes time.

The glazing bars are about 22mm wide so doing it freehand is not an easy option.

The cost of painting is threatening to be half as much again as the cost of the windows.

There has to be an easier way... does anyone know what it is please?

Manks

 

[Flyfisher]

No, but I'm about to replace four windows with a total of 66 individual panes (18mm glazing bars), so I'm also very eager to learn of a easier way!

I did wonder about painting the frames before glazing. At least that would make painting the inside much easier.

 

[Cloudscape]

I imagine this will cause fainting and indigestion :? but... slap the paint on willy nilly and then clean up the glass with a blade. It takes some nerve to do it, and your neighbours will think you've lost it. :lol: Masking is great but I've been caught when the paint has skinned and tears on removal of the tape. Using a blade needs timing well too. You can make a scraping tool that will leave just a tiny bit of paint lapping onto the glass (I said this would cause indigestion! :lol: ), forming a weatherproof seal round the glass. Most scrapers you buy would either dig into the frame itself, or expect you to be leaving about 3mm of paint on the glass. But use one to make your own and your preferred angle of working. You need to scrape in one pass and get good at stopping at corners. If any scraps of paint adhere, use a tiny piece of very fine wire wool to gently polish the paint off the glass. Clean any wool dust off the paint before it rusts. The paint scrapings can be sticky, so clean them up asap. I tend to mask longer runs where the putty isn't too even, and where I couldn't keep a neat line.

Maybe I should have kept all that to myself. :shock:

 

[Manks]

Cloudscape

Thanks for this. I have considered the "messy and a blade" option and I am fast coming round to it.

Manks

 

[Pford75]

If you are going to try and paint without masking, suggest you use a little neat washing-up liquid on the glass around the edges, since this makes it harder for the paint to fix itself and can be removed much more easily at the end of the job.

Another option which I tried at our last house (before I knew about the washing-up liquid) was to make card templates for the glass. If the windows are all made to exactly the same measurements, it is much easier to 'mask off' the entire panel of glass with a single piece of card, compared to using tape (leave a hole in the middle of the card for your finger, so you can remove the card when finished

 

[Andrew Bodenham]

Cloudscape has it completely right. Trowel on the paint over the edge of the glass then tidy up with a blade afterwards. There are a number of holders available for stanley blades or razor blades. You will probably want to do a bit of fine tuning on the guiding edges so that they don't snag the new paint.

The paint seal onto the glass is an important part of the weatherproofing.

 

[Raylea]

Thats how I did ours the messy way it gets right into the nitty gritty, I did not use a holder around the blade (hurts you fingers after a while though however found it gave great results). Just be careful not to scratch the glass. Good idea about neat washing up liquid maybe vasaline as well might help.

Raylea and good luck

 

[biffvernon]

Some of my customers want their windows painted on the outside so I supply them ready painted as it's easier to do the job on dry land than at the top of a ladder.

I only use linseed oil paint - there's no primer, undercoat, top coat - it all comes out of the same tin. It is very drippy, which adds to the fun, and requires stretching out to a very thin film, twenty brush strokes on every area being typical. You do not put two coats on in a day. Two coats in a week is more typical. Yesterday I painted windows with 48 panes - it took a Melvin Bragg In Our Time, Morning Story and a Women's Hour. Being a good paint, they won't need re-painting until into the 2020s.

I never use masking, either tape or card, but do it all freehand and I paint the wood and the putty not the glass. I don't use a brush from a builders merchant but prefer a much smaller flat artist's brush. My current favourite is about 15 mm wide and maybe 3 mm thick and cost a few pounds. It delivers paint where you want it and not anywhere else.

If a drip does fall where it shouldn't then it can be wiped off with a finger tip, the paint being quite benign to handle and comes off with with soap and water. The brush can similarly be cleaned with soap and water.

 

[ilikecobwebs]

I read this with interest because an artist's brush is ideal for a task like this; we use old ones for doing narrow bits around our windows and since I do oilpainting as a hobby, I've always got a few spare. They aren't as thick (bristle density-wise) as normal decorators' brushes and are a lot easier to control. Hog-hair types are pretty cheap and clean up well.