Save the Windows

The bedrooms, dressing room, and bathroom in our apartment flow around an "aire y luz" (less poetically called a ventilation well in English). The windows opening on to the well are beautiful examples of the French-style design that dominated architecture here in the first part of the 20th century. When we bought the apartment, Kurt vowed to restore the windows to their original beauty. Today he completed his mission, sealing the panes of the last of this set of five windows.

The job was not easy, requiring some gravity-defying contortions to remove old paint, putty, and other debris from both the inside and the outside and then to apply sealer to 24 different sections of glass in each mullioned window. (ADD 1: That's on the outside, Kurt points out. Inside work involved cleaning 156 individual sections of glass on each window.)

The project also featured several trips down to the planta baja (ground floor), where Sr. y Sra. Recondo good naturedly retrieved for us a variety of tools and materials that landed in their patios. It's one way to get to know your neighbors.