1970's Wood Window Trim for Days

 

Every single piece of trim in my house was the same 1970's brown wood (and some still is). I have been slowly painting every square inch of this stuff since the day we moved in. I tackled all the family spaces first. In one summer I did our kitchen, dining room, living room and family room

Every window looked a lot like this one. It's hard to tell but the wood wasn't in that great of shape either. It needed some TLC. Multiple pains of glass and little ridges for days. They also have this outdated hardware that I tried to find replacements for but it appears they don't make them like this anymore! We plan to replace all of our windows in a few years but in the meantime no reason why I can't be happier with what I got!

We were doing work in the kitchen and luckily able to replace the outside trim on one of our windows. For all windows I had to sand down every surface first. Not super easy with all those ridges! Also, sanding creates a ton of dust. I taped off all edges and sadly each piece of the old window hardware since I would have to save them for the time being.

I applied three (yup three) coats of primer to help lighten up the dark wood.

I applied two coats of my fav Sherwin Williams Snowbound enamel paint semi-gloss sheen.

I did this to each of the three very large windows in our main family rooms. The biggest trick when painting windows is to plan your project for a day you don't mind having the windows open ALL DAY LONG also making sure their is not rain in the forecast. The primary reason is for rain to not get in the house but also even a little extra moisture in the air can add days onto your drying time. I planned my days well but it still took MANY days for these bad boys to completely dry. When I did have to close them I would use parchment paper in the cracks so the paint wouldn't stick and peel. I did this for weeks even after they felt totally dry.

In total each window took a long weekend to complete every step but then weeks to completely dry. Surprisingly I didn't need very much paint so ultimately it was not a very expensive project. Probably about 1/2 gallon of primer and 1/2 gallon of paint.

Next project is to paint more of these exact windows in the kids rooms!