One of my favorite features of the house is a wall of casement windows on the east side of the living room.The house must have been really fancy to have so many windows when it was built back in 1914.
I don’t think the windows can be opened at this point, though. The hardware is heavily corroded, and it appears that the main thing holding the windows together is the many layers of paint. I’m concerned that they’ll just fall apart when I try to open them.
Before I begin the project of removing and, if necessary, rebuilding the windows, I want to make sure that they’ll have screens to keep out our tropical fauna while they’re down. We can’t put screens on the outside, since the windows open outward. If we put screens on the inside, we wouldn’t be able to get to the windows to open and close them.
I found screens that attach magnetically on the inside. Basically, you glue up magnetic strips, then frame the screens to size with magnetic material and trim them. The result is a full-size screen (I sized this one to cover two windows). You can easily pull the screens off (I prefer not looking through screens if we don’t want the windows open), but you can also just pull up a corner to get to the hardware and open/close the windows. I think I’ll have to add a narrow rail at the bottom of the windows for this to work, and it isn’t an ideal situation but it might be the best approach. We just did the one panel (2 windows) so we can see if we like it before I commit to it.
—2p