# Window sill repair



## Corinthia (Mar 3, 2012)

Hey there! New to the forums.

Quick background: bought a cheap, 1910-era condo awhile back with an ex-partner, who was planning to make it a renovation project. Well, he bailed long ago, and now I'm stuck renovating it myself and hoping to have it in selling quality for 2014. 

Unfortunately, I am utterly clueless about renovation, and have already had an extremely negative experience with a couple of general contractors (dropped $3,000 on work that's probably going to have to be completely redone). 

So I'm hoping to learn to fix a few of the minor things myself. I figured this is one small project to start, but I'm not sure the best way.

This is the windowsill in the bathtub, it's in horrendous shape with about 100 years of paint finally peeling off, as you can see, and the wood is in rough shape as well:





Now, we can't change the windows here (it's a condo-wide project), so I'm restricted to cleaning up the paint and woodwork around the window.  

But I'd like to get it looking half-decent, just plain white and nicer. How do I go about this? I tried sanding it down with sandpaper but it didn't seem to accomplish much. 

Anyone want to start me off on this journey?


----------



## nealtw (Mar 5, 2012)

You may want to look into chemical strippers. Keep in mind that you will have lead paint so just sanding and scraping may not be good for you.


----------



## joecaption (Mar 11, 2012)

Faster and safer to just remove what you have and replace with new vinyl trim so there will be no chance of it rotting again.
A window in a wet area is just not a great idea.
Any reason that you can not just replace that old window with a new vinyl replacement window with the same deviders so it will look the same?


----------

