 In the Vallejo Historic Districts, you can't legally replace wooden windows with metal or vinyl. The good news is, it's often less expensive to repair than to replace. Expert window right David Clark is going to give us an example of how it's done. He's repaired many of the wooden windows in Vallejo's historic homes, including some of mine. He'll show us how to take a window apart in four easy steps. The first step is to remove the molding which holds the window on. It's called a stop. The first thing you have to do to remove the double hung window is to remove the interior stop which is right here. The first tool you'll need will be your utility blade to score where the stop meets the casing which is right here. Once you score the trim, you'll come back with your chisel and you'll put it right into that score area, sort of where a nail is. Generally there's going to be a nail here, here, and here. So you put this near the nail and hit it in. You'll do minimal damage because it disperses the pressure all over. If you use a half inch chisel, you'll do damage. Most stops are put on with finishing nails and you can pull them through. However, if a stop has a common nail, that means with a head on it, you can't pull it through. You have to knock it back out and you'll probably get some paint and or wood damage in doing that. If you can't get the stop off, because of the nature of it, you may have to cut the nail and this is the tool you'll use to cut the nail so that you can free the stop and then you will address the nail when it's out, either removing what's left there on both the stop and or the casing. And you'll know you're there when the tip goes through like that, see? I'm already in there. Nothing. All clean of nails. Now that we have taken the jam off and cleaned it, then the next thing I do is I always mark every piece I take off. So I will mark this number one window we did. I'll put a mark here at number one. You'll find, ironically, these things change as you do the windows. One will be tighter, one will be a little looser and you'll find yourself cutting off the tight one to fit it and then you'll come to the loose one and have a big gap. So the best thing is to keep where it came from, going back to where it came from. And so you do that by marking it. I will not only mark the jam, I'll mark the parting bead, I'll mark the sashes. So what I do is I mark all horizontal in the middle and all vertical on the top. So when you see the mark is you know it's a leg and then you say which side you go on is the right or left. This one definitely says it's a left because of where it goes. David's second step is to remove the window without losing the sash cords, better known by their technical term, ropes. Now to take the sash out. There we go. These ropes are still here. We'll pop the rope out. Now I would not just let the rope go and fall down, you can do damage. If another weight is down there, depending on how it laid in the floor here, it can lay into the trajectory of this other weight and lock itself into it if it gets dropped. It's a hell, real hard to get it free. You generally have to remove this to free up the tension that has been created by locking together. So I would be very careful to let it go down. What I usually do with this side is I do a half itch and like that and let it go up. If you have wooden window repair questions or suggestions, please leave them in the comment section. A few years ago, I started reaching out to neighbors to help with various issues relating to our historic homes. As I spoke to local experts, I began to think about how to best share what I know. The result has become VallejoHistoricHomesSupport.com. The website is a video blog series that's meant to encourage local preservation and increase our enjoyment of living in historic Vallejo. It's been a tremendous labor of love and I'm excited to share it with you. I'm Chris Jacobson, a local Vallejo realtor and I love our historic homes. Your comments and questions are important to me. Please tell me your wooden window stories. I read every comment and I hope to hear from you there.