Painted Windows Stick

Posted by Kristin Abraham Jun 27, 2007

I usually don't pay any attention to the weather. It's hot, cold, raining, whatever. It doesn't matter to me because I'm a writer and I stay at home. All I care about is if there is about an hour window somewhere in the day when I can go running. But I've just learned a valuable lesson about the weather and painting. Obviously, it's something I knew, or should have, and I really didn't take into consideration.

Last week was beautiful, we had some really gorgeous days. Since I'm in the (very slow) process of painting my wood trim upstairs white I thought it would be a good week to tackle one of the windows. I planned on taking the window out of the frame and setting it up on my saw horses and letting it cure for a couple days so having a good weather day was pretty key.

Well, I guess I got a little bit excigted about putting the window back together and the mess of having window panes on saw horses in my office was causing a bit of anxiety so I put the window together after just one day of curing. Oops.

And then the weather. Yes, mother nature, I will now pay attention to those forecasts. It rained and rained and rained and then the humidity hit such highs that it feels like it's raining outside. So what happened. The non-cured paint softened and is glueing itself to the other non-cured paint. I tried not to paint any of the rails so that it wouldn't affect the sliding but there were parts that had to be painted for aesthetic reasons and now they're sticking. I open and close the window several times a day, hoping to prevent any permanent sticking but it's literally back breaking work.

I'm tempted to put a little WD40 on the rails and may resort to this solution. I just don't want the grease to get all over and I have 2 cats that love sitting in that window. So I guess the lesson is, if you're painting windows then let the paint cure properly and take extra pains to make sure you're not painting something that will affect the movement of the window.