Storm Windows Part I: Who’s Your Dado?

We’re very excited to share our storm window tutorial(s) with you guys. We’re keeping the majority of our original wood windows to be eligible for a sizable tax credit through the Historic Society. Not to mention, the “trend” around the neighborhood is to keep and repair the old windows for historic charm/accuracy.

Our windows are not in particularly great shape. They’re in better shape since we did the work on the exterior of the house this Summer, but we still have some drafts and would like to keep as much of our heat in as possible (or keep the cold out, however you look at it).This was our first project to use a table saw. Yikes! I’m happy to report that all limbs are accounted for!!

Aaron received a nice table saw for his birthday in September (from his favorite wife). We had been completing projects in which we kept saying, “If we had a table saw, we could…” We knew that we’d have to purchase either a table saw or a router for this project, so we went for the tool we thought we’d use more.

We bought our supplies at Home Depot, including a dado blade. We knew the design we wanted included dado cuts (dado: a cut that makes a groove instead of cutting all of the way through the board). However, when we opened the instruction packet for the saw, we noticed that our saw does not support dado blades. Uh-oh. We debated sending the saw back, but I had done quite a bit of research on compact table saws, and had concluded that this was probably the best saw in our budget. Do we exchange for a slightly lesser quality saw with dado capacity or keep our beautiful Dewalt and make it work? We made it work. And we’re happy we did.

Per window, we bought an 8 footer (for the tops, sides, and bottoms) and two 6 footers (for the sides).

After we ~~scratched the rip fence~~ did some close test cuts, we decided that we’d better make a jig. [exit Aaron stage left– not to be seen until window fitting]

I, Erin, made a jig to protect the rip fence (the think you slide the board you’re cutting against to keep your cut straight). Huh?!? Here she is:

Not too shabby for a novice, eh??

I knew my center boards would need to be dado-cut on both sides, so I ran those through the saw. It took 3 passes through the saw to achieve a dado that was 1/2″ tall and 1/4″ deep without the dado blade. It was slightly more time consuming than using a dado blade, but was cheaper and safer.

The top, bottom, and side rails all needed a single dado. Here are the tops and sides- I had already cut and dry fit each of them to each window numerous times:

Since I didn’t have a spare set of hands, I had to get resourceful. The saw horse was at the same height as the saw, so it caught the board as I slid it off of the saw:

At this point, I jumped up and down and yelled, “Oh Yeah! Who’s your dado?!?!? ” Not really…….

We bought a cheapo doweling kit at Home Depot that saved our lives. I drilled holes for 1/4″ dowels in the top and bottom boards. I can’t drill a clean hole to save my life, which is one of the many reasons I need Aaron home to do projects with me. He’s got some kind of hole drilling finesse.

Here’s how it’ll work with the plexi-glass. We weren’t thrilled with the idea of the dado cut all of the way across, but the dowels still worked perfectly and the structural integrity wasn’t compromised. We just went with it.

A few ~~weeks~~ days later, Aaron and I were home at the same time before dark (gasp!). We measured, cut, and drilled the dowel holes in the sides. We inserted the 1/4″ dowels to hold the frame together:

We fit, trimmed, and drilled dowel holes in our center boards. We added dowels.

Did I mention that we dry fit 50,000,000,000,000 times!?!?

We glued the joints with exterior wood glue and put the frames back in the window to dry. We (a) don’t have enough clamps for 6 windows and (b) figure if the frames are going to bow, we want them to bow to the shape of the window! You know you have a good, tight fitting storm windows when you pop the frames into the window and they just stay on their own! Beautiful.

Several days later, we pulled them down, sanded the joints and excess glue spots. Here they are, dry, sanded and ready for Phase II! Too bad it is too cold and rainy for painting this week. Guess they’ll have to wait until….????