Steel casement story, part 1

We have 9 gorgeous steel casement windows manufactured by Hope's. We have three different sizes/kinds in four areas. They've suffered from many many many years of neglect and many layers of paint that clearly wasn't the kind they needed to keep them from rusting. A shower covers the left half of one, which you can see from the outside, but not the inside.

When we bought the house, our first angle of attack was to FIX THE WINDOWS (not just the steel ones), so that the elements weren't coming in through the broken glass and not-closed frames.

The previous owners were such
handy folks. I know their
neighbors were demanding
help from them all the time.

The steel windows are not original to the house, but were put in in a series of additions sometime after the 1930s, when Hope's became Hope's. The entire shed dormer addition to the big attic/library was once windowed with them, but sometime in the past some previous owner ripped out two of them. The old trim was still there, but the outside wall had been resheathed and sided, and then some other owner had cut a giant, badly planned hole in the wall for a window air conditioner.

In our consideration for how to deal with that hole, we decided we might just need an air conditioner up there as well, so instead of just walling it over, we put in a new window, which does not match the casements at all, but is there for a purpose and certainly looks better (and is more weatherproof!) than the nasty hole that was there. I do plan to use the original trim around it, so at least that will match. The window stool was partially rotted where water was getting inside the hole, but I salvaged enough of it to work on the new window, which is considerably smaller. It might look odd on one side where I had to cut it a bit too short because of the rot, but I really want to keep the old wood, so we'll manage with it looking ever so slightly off from perfect.

I digress! Most of the casement operators were badly worn and when they did work they did so only after pushing or pulling the window a little first so the gears would catch. A few of the handle locks were completely missing, and one is broken. I contacted Hope's, and they got back to me very quickly. However, I was distressed when I discovered replacements from the manufacturer would run me in the neighborhood of $150 per operator. Quick math told me this was $300 per window, $2700 for all of them! Just to open and close the existing windows! I balked. That was a quarter what we paid for the whole house, and that didn't even include the prices for the locks, which my brain can't even remember after the drooling sticker shock on the operators. I considered just getting 4 for the downstairs windows (the most important ones to close properly, since they're right on the ground and an open casement window = a door). I wanted to have some with Hope's on them, so a future owner would be able to discover the same thing about the windows that I did. I'm still debating this.

A friend told me the machine shop at the local college would probably be able to work the original hardware so the gears would operate. This is another thing I need to check into.

I did a ton more research, found a lot of sites that offered window hardware. I had a very difficult time finding any hardware on any of these sites to match my windows. I measured the screw hole spacing, then I measured again. I swear, these guys had the strangest, most non-standard sort of spacing (4 and 1/8 inches on the operator, 1 and 13/16ths on the handle...thirteen sixteenths?) and I just couldn't be certain that my measurements were right, because nothing I could find matched them.

Then I discovered Blaine Window Hardware, which had a ton of stuff. I got very very excited that I'd find my operators. I didn't. BUT. The handles were there! $29.50 each. That's in the neighborhood of $60 per window, but they are exact matches to the handles I already have, so I only needed three. I ordered two, to make certain they would work. They fit, but didn't come with fasteners, and no standard one would work due to the way it was shaped and the length having to be exact. So, grabbing a fastener from another handle, we made a trip to Lowe's to try to match it. After half an hour adventuring in the specialty fastener drawers, we did. They look a little odd as the color doesn't match, but for now I just rejoice in the fact that I can lock the upstairs windows.

After I ordered the locks, I kept looking for the operators. Site after site passed by. Truth, Fenestra. No, no. Finally, Hope's! At Robert Brooke and Associates, there they were. $22.95 per operator. I bought six and had them shipped for around the price of one from Hope's. Thankfully, they do come with fasteners. With the six that I have I figured I would replace the more non-working ones in the attic, and bring those downstairs, since at least downstairs you can push the window all the way closed from the outside. The old ones from upstairs say Hope's, and work a little better than the ones that were downstairs, I imagine from less frequent use (or abuse). Now I can both crank the upstairs windows open/closed and lock them. It's quite the coup.

New handles on the left window, old ones on the right. Ditto on the operators.
Will eventually replace the operators on the right window, but for now it's not necessary
since we can open the other windows and just leave that one closed.

The fasteners don't match, but that's okay! Really!

Next up, adventures in restoring steel casement windows!