THE ARTISAN CHRONICLES

A Six-Month Plan to Restore Your Home and Build Local Skill Stop looking or waiting for years. Train your Artisan today! There’s a bottleneck in historic window restoration. Homeowners call around. They get quotes that feel astronomical. They’re told the waitlist is two or three years long. And eventually someone says: “Just replace them.” But what if the problem isn’t the windows? What if the problem is capacity? A Different Way to Think About Restoration Every time we run

How a Window Craft Outpost Can Turn a Historic House Neighborhood Around There’s a quiet crisis unfolding in historic house communities across America. Windows are failing. Homes are being written off. Entire neighborhoods are told, “It can’t be saved.” So replacement windows roll in. Demolition follows. And something much bigger than wood and glass disappears. We lose the artisans. We lose the trade. We lose the knowledge that once kept these places alive. But there is  anot

A simple question came up recently in a Facebook group: “Anyone ever use Red Devil window glazing? It says it’s oil based… not latex like DAP. I prefer Sarco but we’re in a bind and need to finish a job.” It’s a familiar situation. Every window restorer eventually faces it. Two respected voices offered thoughtful replies. John Rodgers, president of the Window Preservation Alliance, explained that most traditional glazing compounds will technically work.

I took a photo recently of a house in San Antonio that quietly says everything about what Window Craft really is. At first glance, it just looks like a handsome historic façade. But if you actually look at it the way an artisan reads a job, you see something deeper: Two small oval windows flanking the front door. A lace-like transom over the entry. Normal 6-over-6 and 8-over-8 double-hung windows above. And gothic arched windows up in the attic that I personall

Across America, historic house communities are quietly slipping toward a point of no return. Windows rot. Skills disappear. Trades fragment. Well-intentioned repairs fail. And each generation loses a little more of the knowledge required to care for the homes that define their neighborhoods. What if there were a way to stop that decline—not with a one-off project, not with a temporary grant, but with a permanent, regenerating system rooted directly in the community?

Across every historic neighborhood in America, the same truth quietly echoes through the cracks of peeling paint and the rattling of century-old sashes: our windows are calling out for help. And when the windows go, the rest of the house soon follows. But here’s the good news—if we save the windows, we save the community. Not just aesthetically. Not just symbolically. Literally. Historic windows are the keystones of our built heritage.

WindowFest + WindowLympics (Oct 27–Nov 7, Harrison, AR): Two weeks of hands-on training, real-world competitions, and an artisan community built around the Five Pillars of Window Craft. Come learn. Come compete. Come belong.

When it comes to saving historic windows, most people focus on quick fixes: patching rot, slapping on paint, or swapping in replacements

We’re working on an amazing project right now – the wood windows at West Tampa’s Centro Espanol building. It’s always interesting...

(First published Sept, 2020) How is singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat like an Artisan Army working on windows?? Singers who know and...

The secret to excellent execution is an excellent set up. A worker may wind up with an excellent result every now and then, but for one...

Because there aren’t any thunder storms lol! Its the big secret window replacement companies don’t want you to know. Why? They make...

So we have a large project coming up soon, in a couple of weeks as a matter of fact. For months we’ve been working on small to medium...

How is singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat like an Artisan Army working on windows?? Singers who know and understand not only the song, but...

Three things you want to protect yourself against at work are dust, unnecessary work, and unnecessary client judgment. Protect Yourself...

The methods for bringing turn of the century window hardware back to life aren’t immediately obvious. There are many styles of hardware,...

There are three components of a Total Window Makeover because there are three components that make up an historic window. They are the sash

Replacing your Windows? You’re only replacing 25% of your Window.

You have to glaze by Friday if you want to finish the job on time and get paid. Glazing by Friday takes advantage of the natural two day...

How long would it take you to restore the five windows I just agreed to restore? I'm going to try to get it done in six days. I might...