With rising heating costs, people living in old houses have been turning to my company, DoubleHung - Historic Window Restoration, for some solutions to keep more of their high-dollar warmth inside.  However, one of the conundrums for historic property owners is finding a way to improve the energy efficiency of their beautiful old windows while preserving the building's historical accuracy and asthetics.

Over the years, many homeowners have opted for aluminum 'triple track' storm windows as a way to keep the cold at bay, but the truth is... they are butt ugly.  So much so that I took them off of the front of my house last year, opting instead to pay a little more for natural gas than to ruin the from-the-street look of our 1914 home.  But, while I have many tricks up my sleeve for making old windows weather-tight, I have found that none is more effective - nor more elegant - than the way they used to do it.

The energy efficiencies found with the new-fangled insulated glass (IG) windows are attained because of the air space that is created between two sealed panes.  This air space acts as an insulating buffer.

The way they used to create this airspace was with a set of full-view, wooden storm windows and almost every pre-1930 house had a full set of them.  But over the years they fell into disrepair and were thrown out.  In their place came the ubiquitous aluminum products that actually perform their insulating/protection function quite well ... if you can stand to look at them.  But, like me, many people can't.

After much searching, I have found a company that will replicate these old storm windows for a price that people can actually afford and I have installed several sets of them over the past couple of months.  Below are before/after pictures of one such installation at the National Registry home of John and Bobbi Kozel up in Eden, NC.

How are your windows looking?

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Since Calvin asked, I'll add my voice to the call for Bruce Davis, or any other of Greensboro/Guilford County's black elected officials, to exhibit some online leadership and maintain a weblog.  You get no points to just start one and walk away.

Calvin's reason for his call to Davis, or anyone else who is black and an elected leader, is simple: "When I look around Greensboro and especially Greensboro’s blogging community I do not see many people that resemble me...."

But, Cone is right about leading a man to blogging.  And also, like anything else worthwhile, a good blog is a lot like work... in public... in your underwear.  An effective politician-blogger has to have the desire to change things out in the open, and be ready - even willing - to be known far and wide as fallable and human. 

Is that too much to ask?  Within our African-American leadership, apparently so.

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If you will be decking the halls and/or your Christmas tree with those maddening little twinkly lights this weekend - you might want to read this before starting and go ahead and plan a trip to Wal-Mart or similar. 

I wrote it two years ago and Google-ing hall deckers from parts unknown, looking for information on how to fix the confounded things, start to increase my hit count the day after Thanksgiving.  They can't be fixed folks - throw them away.

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