[RogerButton33]

Not sure what type of windows you have. We refinished 11 double hung windows in the original portion of the house. It was a lot of work, we did 5 the first round, and 6 a few months later. I think the house was built in the 50's. Most of the windows were in pretty good shape, but stuck a lot due to multiple paintings and worn springs.

Taking the windows out isn't too hard. Just pull off some moldings, unhook the springs (careful not to let them spin out of control when they come loose), and make sure not to drop the windows since the springs are the only thing holding them up. (Except someone had nailed the top window into the house to keep them from coming down instead of rewinding the springs. ) Took a couple hours to take them out, and nail up some plywood over the openings. We had plywood up for a couple months since we were working several other projects at the same time. (Network/cable wiring, siding, some electrical wiring) If it was just the windows, could probably have them back up in a week or two.

All the fixtures had to be replaced because they were rusting through. The springs were mostly good, just had to be refinished, grease/dirt buildup cleaned off then oiled up, and rewound tighter. (I took a couple days and sanded them down real nice because we were thinking of perhaps keeping a metallic look. Then we eneded up just painting them white. ) We covered up a 12th window with the addition, so we used it for spare parts when the others were lacking. Was good because a couple of the springs were broken, and one frame needed to be replaced. (Maybe you can use the upstairs windows you replace similarly.)

We replaced all the glass too because it was so brittle it was breaking when we stripped the putty off. Had to do it because the putty was in terrible shape, just wherever it was still hard it would crack the glass when we took it off. We tried to save some of the glass, but after a while it became clear it wasn't worth the time to try to do it carefully, since it was cracking anyways. (Sometimes just because of the heat gun even.) The rest of the glass we just broke out with a hammer (sheet of plastic underneath, towel over it), boxed up all the glass and took it to the recyclers. Breaking glass is nowhere near as fun as it sounds. Neither is cleaning up broken glass.

Then we used a heat gun and putty knives to remove most of the paint from the frames and casings. Easily the most time consuming part of the process. Hot, smelly (make sure to have some sort of gas mask with a good filter), messy, and took about a week of 3-4 hours days for 2 of us. Might be easier or harder depending on how much paint buildup you have, and the style of the windows.

Ended up taking the frames apart and using a router to get some of the harder putty out and square things up. Replaced a couple of worn/broken frame pieces. Then reassembled the frames and painted them. That was like a vacation after the paint stripping.

Put the new window panes in, tacked them in, and used some linseed oil putty to seal it up. That was pretty interesting, tough to get it right, and it takes a long time to cure so you have to be careful not to touch the putty for the next few months. First few windows took about an hour each to get the putty right, last few it was getting easy and maybe 10 minutes each.

Re-hanging the windows was easy once that was all done. We used new wood on track moldings, already had them painted, and had to wind the springs quite a bit (and go back and rewind some later), but that was a couple days work.

Mostly it was a lot of fun except the paint stripping and the poor state the glass was in.