Additional Complexity, Tools Required & Lead Paint
Finally, to complete the picture, I’ve added one of our cats (Suzy) to indicate relative size of the window and to highlight an additional level of complexity. Cats cannot resist broken sash cords, looking out of windows, examining new tools, elaborate and non-elaborate escape attempts and generally getting in the way. I would hazard a guess that the complexity of this fix moves from a ‘3’ (on my arbitrary scale of 1 (easy) to 10 (difficult)) to about a ‘5’ perhaps occasionally gusting to a ‘6’ depending on the nature of your particular cat. You would know best.
Tools for the Job
As in every job around the house you’ll run a balance of the joy(s) of acquiring a new perfect tool(s) to accomplish a specific task never before attempted and taking a more economical (both money and time) of using what you already have around the house.
These are the tools I used for our current job – i didn’t have to purchase anything new! Although admittedly this is the 6th window I’ve fixed over the years and have accumulated precisely what I need.
Your mileage may vary. I even used some duct tape.
As Red Green says , “Spare the Duct Tape. Spoil the job.“
Lead Paint
One more comment – if you’ve got an older house (built before the 1970s) you’ve likely got lead paint on your windows sash, stiles, beads, casing, trim etc. My guess is that if you have wooden double hung windows at some point you definitely will have lead paint. You need to remove the paint according to your local guidelines. You can read about it in many places on the web but more specifically just check out your local municipal building and health codes for the details in your area.
In my case – I assumed that I had lead paint – but worked towards extremely minor disruption of paint and cleaned up the room and environs immediately every time i created a little dust. If this is your first time working on sash windows – you’ll make a much bigger mess and you’ll need to tackle the lead paint issue first before starting with the actual repair.