I transformed my gross timber windows for less than £50 — this is how they became a thing of beauty over a weekend

We’re in our third year of renovating our 1700s stone cottage and sometimes the smaller jobs get passed over for more dramatic destruction or construction. However, any renovator worth their salt will also know that these smaller easier DIY jobs are what make a house really feel special and loved.

During the dizzy excitement of transforming our tired and dark kitchen into a bright bedroom-cum-office, smashing concrete plaster from our stone walls, building a new wall and learning how to lime plaster, I really looked at the state of the timber windows. They desperately needed some attention.

So, with the scraps of our budget and time, I took a weekend and £50 to see how we could go about restoring them. Here's how I did it.

1: Removing the decades of paint and grease from the frames

The room that was soon to be my home office/ spare room was, in fact, our old kitchen. Now, when I say the ventilation was basically non-existent and the damp was overwhelming, I seriously mean it. The wooden window next to the hob was in the worst nick, considering that was a 70s replacement and the original wood and steel window was holding up really nicely. The fixtures were literally coming off, the paint peeling and it was covered in grease that had built up from cooking over the years and the damp has created an interesting mould that I’m sure was incredibly dangerous to be making meals beside - that’s the living on site life! The other, older window was in better shape, but still desperately needed some attention.

I am certain that this side of the house used lead paint and the windows had had decades of fresh coats so I was taking no chances. Sanding was out of the question and the paint was so thick I don’t think a heat gun would have touched the surface. So, I turned to paint stripper.

'Paint stripper is used to remove existing paint coatings from a surface so you can get back to the original substrate before refinishing,' explains Michael Murray of Textbook Painting Company. 'On older timber windows, it's particularly useful when multiple layers of paint have built up over time or when you need to remove deteriorating coatings to achieve a smooth, long-lasting finish. Stripping the surface back to bare wood also allows you to inspect and repair any hidden damage before priming and repainting.'

I have asthma (not going to lie, the damp in this house really hasn’t helped) and I’m really sensitive to VOCs (voltaic organic compounds). We’ve tried our best to use low VOC products where possible as these chemicals do continue to leech gases into the air for decades. I bought Home Strip Paint and Varnish Remover from Amazon for £13.95 - it is solvent free, zero VOCs and is more like a gel than a solution.

Michael Murray

Michael has been providing painting and decorating services for over 20 years.

'Modern eco paint strippers can be highly effective, but they should be judged by the result rather than how quickly the paint bubbles,' warns Joe Buckley, an expert timber joiner and the Founder and Director of Heritage Joinery Solutions. 'Water based gels and products using ingredients such as benzyl alcohol usually work slower than solvent based strippers.

'That longer working time can be an advantage on a heritage window because the coating softens gradually, giving the joiner more control around glazing bars and moulded details. Eco doesn't mean harmless, so gloves, ventilation and the manufacturer’s instructions still matter.'

We have a lot more windows and doors to strip later on and the larger tub would have been cheaper, but I’ve never used this product before and wanted to test it out.

The instructions give different advice based on the thickness or type of paint and I foolishly though an hour would be enough to penetrate so many layers of thick white paint. When that experiment failed, I went nuclear. I pasted the globulous clear substance on the frames liberally using an cheap paint brush that had seen better days. I then used the last of our cling film to cover it up for the night.

I found for this process, smaller pieces of cling film with direct contact on the paint stripper worked best, rather than larger pieces spanning the frame. And then, I left it for 24 hours.

Joe Buckley

Joe founded Heritage Joinery Solutions, with a specialism on restoration, replication and installation of traditional timber windows and doors for period homes.

2: Scraping decades of paint away

When I came back to the window it was incredibly interesting to look at. You could definitely see that some areas had worked better than others as the paint literally had lifted and wrinkled. A lot of this stuff came off with the clingfilm and I was able to wrap it nicely.

Sadly, the paint was so thick in some areas that I had to use a scraper to encourage it to shift. The result was patchy at best so I decided to give it another coat of the stripper and another 24 hours. This time most came off; it wasn’t perfect, but I could definitely work with it.

3: Giving the frames a fresh coat of paint

After wiping down the frames with hot soapy water and letting it dry, I began repainting with wood-appropriate paint. I chose Farrow and Ball’s Marmello in full gloss for £35 for the frame to complement our extremely bright yellow walls. It’s a reddish brown that is really beautiful in the morning light that the room receives.

Painting took no time at all, but it was kind of faffy to avoid getting it on the panes, but I wasn’t super careful as I just scraped whatever splodged over with a razor. It took two coats to get a good finish, but I really love the way they’ve turned out.

So, for a weekend job, was it worth it?

Absolutely, 1000 times, yes, this is a DIY project that was worth it. I even think you could bash out the job in a day if your paint is a little more amenable than mine. All in all, it took me three days including the time I left the paint stripper to do it's thing, but the actual hands-on time was closer to around five hours.

A project like this is ideal for DIYers who can only snatch away pockets of time — nothing necessarily needs to be done at a certain time and active work could all be done in short bursts. It was incredibly easy and didn’t need any specialist tools, just a couple of paint brushes and a scraper. I think if your windows aren’t suspected of lead paint or are slightly newer it would be even easier!