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T-minus 10 weeks and counting. And we still have a bit of work left to do in the nursery. We’re not even at the point of decorating yet (the fun stuff!). In fact, we haven’t even started painting yet.

Last year we had our bedroom floors refinished. Originally the three bedrooms had carpeting. After ripping up the carpets we found two rooms had wide pine boards, one (now the nursery) had maple. The refinished floors came out great, especially the nursery. The original poly on the maple had turned yellow, which I hated. Now it’s a nice blond color.

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For about the past year SM and I have been debating on whether or not to replace the windows in our house, or to find other ways of weatherizing them.

Last winter was cold. When we realized how fast we were burning through a full tank of oil, we panicked. Then we turned the thermostat down. I bundled up with sweaters and blankets. Now, we aren’t the kind of people who keep the thermostat cranked. We keep it at 65 when we aren’t home (or when we’re sleeping), 68 or so when we are home. That changed quickly. We ended up dropping our programmed temps by 5 degrees to ease our oil use.

I’m sure there are a number of things we can do in the house to make future winters bearable. The most obvious thing at the moment are the windows. Our house is over a hundred years old. The windows probably are too. They’re drafty. They rattle. Some are painted shut. Some are difficult to open. Some of the weights have been cut off, so they need to be propped in order to stay open. A couple have missing or damaged storm windows. Something certainly needs to be done, but what? Replace or refinish? Honestly, I’ve been the one who been waffling on what we should do. SM has been firmly in the “replace them all” camp all this time.

At first, I assumed we’d replace them. But I was afraid of damaging the frames or moulding. And the amount of work to replace them. And, the cost! We have 22 windows that would need to be replaced. That could add up to a very substantial amount of money. It certainly wouldn’t be something we could do at once.

So, I did a little bit of research. There seems to be two camps. The first: all old windows should be replaced with new ones. Period. Old windows = evil energy sucking behemoths that must go. Old windows will never be as good as new ones. You’ll save lots on your energy bills if you replace them. Hey, I like saving money!

And the second camp: older windows are worth saving. They’ve survived the past 100+ years. With some care and attention, they’ll last for much longer. Possibly far longer than a replacement window might last. It seems like more people are changing their minds about completely gutting old windows for new ones. With a little bit of work (and far less money) old windows can be just as energy efficient as new ones.

It’s amazing how heated people could get over this.

So, I waffled. A lot. One month I was ready to replace. The next, I wanted to preserve. And SM was still firmly set on replacing.

I’ll admit, the cost of replacing the window does scare me. How do we know that spending thousands of dollars (probably over ten thousand!) is the right way to go? That’s a lot of money on the line. Are our windows worth preserving? Do we have a responsibility to preserve whenever possible?

After a lot of research, I think we’ve finally made a decision. We’re going to restore our existing windows. This means we’ll add weatherstripping, insulate the window weight pockets, and fix/replace the storm windows. It took some time, but SM is on board too. We may start with the rooms we spend the most time in and slowly do all of them.

I have no idea if this is the right decision. I just hope we’ll use less energy this winter. And maybe we’ll be able to turn up the thermostat a smidgen when we’re home