Got Water Spots? I’ve Got a Magic Powder
We have 2 large (8 feet wide by 4 feet tall) windows in our living room. Nice, but they’ve actually always been an eyesore since we moved in a year and a half ago because the previous owner apparently ran her sprinkler and let it hit the house. Here in Likely, this causes horrible water spots on the windows and you couldn’t even see through the bottom half of those windows! We’ve tried cleaning them with normal window cleaner and a few other solutions, but those didn’t take it off, and we kind of just gave up for now because we knew we needed something better. This has been driving Glenn’s dad crazy…almost every time he stopped by (he’s a UPS man so that is often!) he would say something about a product he heard about or asking us if we’ve tried something to fix it. Like I said, we pretty much ignored the problem and just kept the blinds closed!
Gross, right? We thought they were ruined and we had to live with them like this!
Now a few weeks ago Randy (Glenn’s dad) dropped off a little white jar of ‘stuff’ to clean windows, and we really didn’t think much of it. He does things like that all the time. We didn’t jump at the chance to try out this product or anything, it pretty much sat on top of our refrigerator for a week or so. So one Friday morning I’m making our bed and I stop to admire the view out of our sparkling-clean brand new bedroom window, wishing it was the same in the living room and then I remembered the little white jar. So I went out to the kitchen and found it, read the directions on the back, grabbed the materials I needed and went outside. I put some water in a stainless bowl, then you dip a sponge in to get it wet, dip that in the jar of white powder, and then go to work on the windows. I scrub a little circle, then grab a damp rag to wipe it off and in my amazement IT WORKED PERFECTLY!
Isn’t that a great view? We were seriously missing out and now we open the blinds every day! Our windows look brand new with very little effort and no harsh chemicals, thanks to a $4 jar of ‘magic’ powder! It’s called ‘Nothin’s Better Water Stain Remover’ (I’m not making this up) and it is worth its weight in gold!!
For you locals you can buy it at Carsten’s! 
Check out these results…before on the left, and after on the right.
See our little jar of the stuff out there? Love it! And to do both of our 8-foot windows and the storm door glass, it didn’t even take the whole 4 oz. jar. Next up is the camp trailer windows! You can use it on all kinds of surfaces (Glass, chrome, porcelain, tile, fiberglass, aluminum and stainless steel will shine and sparkle as new. Removes water, mineral stain, rust, scum, paint overspray, oxidization.)
I promise that I started the job, but as soon as Glenn noticed me out there working on the windows he came out to see how it was going. And took the scrubber from me because he had to try it. And he finished the job. Strangely, he does that a lot. I’m not going to complain.
Magic. Seriously. Go buy some now!
Do you have water spots? Do you have a ‘magic’ cleaning product you’d like to share? Please tell us!!
Read MoreNew Windows: Part 2
And here they are! I can’t wait to paint them. Or take the sticker off of the bathroom window. You know how that goes…just haven’t had a chance to get the gooey stuff off yet! But the sticker has some useful info: We purchased them from our local Ace Hardware and the brand is MI Windows and Doors (the company is in Pennsylvania). They are Energy Star Qualified in all U.S. zones. They are vinyl windows, double paned low-e glass. It lists the energy performance ratings, beginning with the U-Factor, which is 0.34. The Solar Heat Gain Coefficient is 0.31, and the Visible Transmittance is 0.59. The +DP is 30.0 and the -DP is 30.0. What does this all mean? If you click over to EnergySavers.gov you can find out all of this handy information.
The U-Factor is the rate at which a window, door or skylight conducts non-solar heat flow. The lower the U-Factor, the more energy efficient the window (ours is 0.34, which is pretty low).
The solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC) is the fraction of solar radiation admitted through a window, door or skylight. The lower the SHGC, the less solar heat it transmits and the greater its shading ability. This means that it won’t fade your furniture. Ours is 0.31.
Visible transmittance is a fraction of the visible spectrum of sunlight (380 to 720 nanometers), weighted by the sensitivity of the human eye, that is transmitted through a window’s, door’s, or skylight’s glazing. A product with a higher VT transmits more visible light. VT is expressed as a number between 0 and 1. Ours is 0.59, so it transmits more than half of the visible light through the window.
DP stands for design pressure and are rated by testing the window to pressures equal to 1.5 times the DP requirement. So if a window is rated to DP40, then it is tested to 60psf. If a window is rated to DP20, then it is tested to 30psf. Ours are rated DP30, so they are tested to 45psf. Design pressure actually applies to wind speed, and a DP15 can withstand wind speeds up to 95 mph, so I think that DP30 is pretty good! {Info. via replacement-windows.com}
The brand new pine trim is very pretty, but we can’t wait to get painting! Check back with me next week to see how our painting went over the weekend…or how it didn’t go. Have a wonderful Friday and a great weekend! xo, L.
{Info. via EnergySavers.gov and Replacement-Windows.com}
Read MoreNew Windows: Part 1
Hallelujah! All I have to say is…I love hiring other people to do the work around here, ha! We’ve never hired a professional until now, and I am so glad that we did. I wish we had A LOT more moolah so that we could just sit back and let others do the big jobs that we have planned around here. Don’t get me wrong, we love to do a lot of the work ourselves, but sometimes it’s nice to save the headaches and the cursing, and hire a professional.
I’m sure some of you are saying “It’s just new windows…why the heck didn’t you guys tackle this project yourselves?” I know a lot of people who have installed their own windows, and it can be a fairly easy DIY if you know what you’re doing. Well…we actually hired someone this time because our house is brick. And our single-pane, metal frame original-to-the-1963-house windows were mortared in. Not installed in a nice wooden frame like most windows; they were in there for good. Anyway, our favorite contractor figured out the easiest way to get it done right away, and we think they look great!
As you can see, the metal frame, single-pane windows cause a lot of moisture and condensation, and that means mold. Yuck. Bye-bye mold.
For the breakdown, we have a total of 10 windows in our house. I am so grateful that the two eight-foot windows in the living room are already updated, and our sliding glass door to the backyard is nice as well. I don’t know if we would have even bought the house if those needed replacing. Anyway, our room and Harper’s room both have two windows that needed to be replaced, there is one in the main bathroom, one in the office, one in the kitchen and one in the laundry room. We decided to prioritize the window-replacing based on how last winter went. We knew that the two bedrooms were a priority, especially because Harper sleeps in her own room now (she slept in the bassinet in our room last winter), and we wanted to make sure that her room stayed warm. There are four windows right there that were a priority. The window in the bathroom is also a priority, in my opinion, plus it is the smallest so I knew it would be inexpensive – it’s only 2′ x 2′. I hate stepping out of a hot shower into a FREEZING bathroom. So there are the five windows that we are getting replaced today. We’re going to wait on the office, the kitchen, and the laundry room windows. There is also a window in the garage, but I doubt we’ll ever replace that one.
This would have been a fight waiting to happen if we attempted this ourselves! I decided that paying a contractor would be a lot cheaper than a divorce. Just kidding!!
My favorite part is the new wood trim around the windows. Our house has no architectural details whatsoever, and so this made me very happy.
Now to paint!
Isn’t it pretty? Note to self: buy Glenn a router for Christmas so he can make me lots of pretty (and finished) things like this.
I’m so excited to put Harper’s shades back up tonight…her room was so bright this morning, she was up at the crack of dawn!
Nice view, huh? That’s the neighbor’s green house, their red kerosene tank, and a little shed next to our house that we plan to rip out and replace with a gate someday.
We got ours back up last night, along with the blackout shade, so our room was like a cave this morning! It blocks the light even better than before with the new trim because there are no gaps! It is so nice, because this window faces east, and the sun will shine right into our room in the morning. Talk about a wake up call! Our contractor said that the light shining through shouldn’t be that bad anymore, though, because he chose low-e windows for us (i.e. it protects furniture from fading as well as saving energy, so it filters some light). Gotta love our new, energy efficient windows!
The next step is putting a coat of exterior primer on the framing that is on the outside of the house before it gets too rainy and cold. We’ve been talking about putting up some paintable trim on the outside of the windows, to inject some color and detail to our ho-hum exterior. I’m wondering if this would be a good excuse to get it done!
Bye bye, nasty old windows! Stay tuned tomorrow for how the rest of Harper’s windows turned out, and for the new bathroom window! I am so excited for that one. We’ll be doing a lot of painting this weekend. And catching flies…with the open windows there are everywhere in our house today! Nice, right?
I also can’t wait to share the rest of the projects that our new windows have inspired. Isn’t that funny? Getting a long awaited project finished gives you the motivation to start the next one! Does that happen to any of you??
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About Me
I'm an interior designer and a draftsperson, but I live in the country. I like it that way. I'm also a firefighter's wife, mom to 2 cute kids, and a homeowner and I like that even better. But right after that is a pretty and affordable space...and I mean a REALLY affordable space. Because I believe good design can be for EVERYONE!
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