 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. Step one, remove the molding which holds the bottom window in place. Use a one and a half inch chisel or wider to pop it off. Remove the nails, make sure to mark each piece. Step two is to remove the window, making sure not to lose the sash cords. David's third step is to remove the wooden divider between the windows. It's called a parting bead. Next procedure is to get the parting bead out. And that there too, if it's been painted in and caught, you're going to have to break that seal. Again, utility knife right here again. I would take two passes, the first one light just to get your path that will fall off and then come out a little more force to get a little deeper. Alright, now we have to get the parting bead out. And once you score it and you look for a nail here that some people put a nail set down here. And if you want to put it near the nail, generally just above it, you want to get this tip underneath this piece. So I go in that diagonal, I go down and then I'm able to pry with this the parting bead out. Coming down here, you keep a little pressure on your parting bead and away from the seal. Here with the chisel and you kind of rock it and you'll find that it wants to come out. Coming out, it gets stuck on the lower part of this. I will take my utility knife and do just a little snip to ease it out. I don't want to cut a lot, but a little snip is okay. It's not going to ruin the window or any other performance. So I rock this, as you can see, it's rocking. I'm now out on top of here. I want to come back here and I want to get my point here as close to this as possible. If this parting bead's grain ran this way, there's a chance, well it does run that way, but sometimes it runs in a manner where you're running and you can split this off. You can always go back together. I've had to do it, but it's best to try not to damage it. I take this and I follow up until it comes out and here we are. The fourth step is to remove the upper window. This window is more likely to be painted shut. Now we have taken the parting bead out. Now we would like to take this upper sash out and I'm pulling on it and it's pretty stuck. So two things I'll do. First, I'll go around maybe with this and I see that there's no real paint here, but there could be paint down underneath. So I'm going up to see and pop any paint that might be in the parting bead area. On the inside, I'll also look on the outside. Take my word, I just did. It's okay, but the window's still kind of stuck. So two things I do right off the bat is that if there's any play between the two, and you have a sash that has these horns, it's easy, or if not, you can hit here. But I hit, you hear that? And it opened up here. You see that movement? It goes down. Often the sash starts to go up and down. Another thing is that if it doesn't go up and down, you're chiseled. I will put it on the outside and the inside right here. I have already removed this parting bead, by the way, because I wanted to pop in and the window is not removing itself. And so with this removed and the window not moving and you still freed up all the paint, I will put this right in here and give a snap to that. And now that we freed up the window and it's moving, we'll take it down and take it out. And if you're doing more than one window, mark it. Step three is to remove the parting bead, which is the small wooden divider between the windows. Step four is to remove the top window. Be prepared that paint may be holding it in place and don't forget not to lose the sash cords. A wooden window that's been restored and properly weatherized is going to be pretty efficient. Replacing wooden windows with vinyl can cost thousands of dollars per window. While restoring wooden windows can take place with a few hours of work and some simple materials. This type of restoration should preserve your wooden windows for future generations. It should pay for itself in terms of energy savings and home equity. And in Vallejo's historic districts, it's the only legal way to improve your wooden windows. Well, this was an intensive and very technical blog post. We want to thank you for hanging in there with us. There's a lot of information we discussed today and we don't expect you to necessarily grab it all the first time. You may not really understand it until you start taking your windows apart and see it for yourself. At the bottom of the blog post, you're going to find David Clark's contact information. And you're welcome to give him a call directly. He's always open to help people. Yes. We're all here to help each other. If you have wooden window repair questions or suggestions, please leave them in the comments 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.