LECOMPTON, Kan. (AP) - Lawrence resident Jim Clark placed a Speed Heater onto a window frame to soften the old, cracked paint and glazing putty that had been applied years ago and then used a scraper to remove the softened residue.
At the other end of his work table, Brian Messenger, of Des Moines, Iowa, was using the same technique to remove old paint and putty from another window.
Once free of the residue, Clark and Messenger removed the panes from the windows so they could be restored and weatherized and then reinstalled on the second floor of Constitution Hall State Historic Site in Lecompton.
“These windows needed a lot of attention,” site administrator Tim Rues told The Topeka Capital-Journal (https://bit.ly/1HJeVWU ). “They’re rehabbing and restoring them, and then they will be operable again.”
Clark and Messenger were among the 18 participants in a four-day window restoration and weatherization boot camp in early April led by Bob Yapp, president of Hannibal, Missouri-based Preservation Resources Inc., founder of the Belvedere School for Historic Preservation and former host of the national PBS television series “About Your House with Bob Yapp.”
Yapp has been involved in hands-on rehab of more than 160 endangered historic properties.
During the boot camp, nine double-hung windows were restored and weatherized at Constitution Hall. Participants - from novices to contractors - learned how to remove wooden window sashes for repair, safely strip old paint and glazing putty and repair the wooden elements of the windows.
“It’s a win-win,” Rues said. “People learn a lost art skill, and it helps this historic site that’s 159 years old.”
Patrick Zollner, deputy state historic preservation officer with the Kansas Historical Society, said the boot camp was funded through a $21,500 grant from the Douglas County Heritage Conservation Council, with the KHS providing a 20 percent match for a total project budget of $26,000. The cost also includes the planned repair and restoration of 11 first-floor windows by a hired contractor through a competitive bid process.
Zollner said KHS staff contacted Yapp to lead the boot camp because of past restoration projects he had done in Kansas, including St. Martha’s African Methodist Episcopal Church in Highland and the South Linwood Park Greenhouse in Wichita.
Yapp said Constitution Hall, built from virgin timber, is in remarkable condition for its age - “90 percent is still intact.”
“It has a variety of windows,” he said, explaining some are original while others had been replaced in the 1900s-1920s and had “deferred maintenance and ill-advised repairs.”
Zollner said one of the goals of the boot camp was to provide participants with the skills to do historic window restorations in their own locales.
“It’s easy to find someone to replace a window but not restore one,” he said.
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Information from: The Topeka (Kan.) Capital-Journal, https://www.cjonline.com
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