After my battle royale with the windows in Hidden Pulleys, Part 1, I got to this project a couple of months later. They were easier in a way as the pulley system was much more visible, but harder in that it was much more invasive to get access to the pulleys. I had to remove all of the trim and cut holes through lathe and plaster in places to get new cords installed.

These two corner windows are very close together and I would eventually discovered the center mullion, if that’s really what that would be called, wasn’t a pocket in any way. It was totally solid.

These windows were fascinating in that each sash was balanced by ONE weight and FOUR pulleys (as you’ll see soon in my bad drawing).

You can see in the photo that I’ve removed stops (which is normal) and trim (which isn’t) and started punching holes in lathe and plaster (also not normal).

The far left and far right pulley were located where you would expect. The center pulleys were at the top of the jamb. Which you would not really expect. And then I would encounter the other pulley at the top of the jamb and the one attached to the weight.

Once I got all the way opened up, it didn’t take long for me to figure out a game plan. It wasn’t exactly easy but it was logical, and that helps. Here is quick rendering of the sash cord path.

Pulleys attached to a weight like this are not super uncommon. I see them when mullion is fairly skinny or in other situations. But I’ve never seen it involved in a set up quite like this.

I used my chain attached to my sash cord to drop down from the pulleys in the top of the jamb and even use my extendable magnet to grab the chain at times and help me along.

As in Hidden Pulleys, Part 1 I drew a simple version of the set up for the bottom sashes. The top sash scheme was the same.

I ran the cord through following the numbered steps in the drawing. I have some videos but I wasn’t able to upload them for some reason. But hopefully the drawing is still helpful in some way. The drawing shows the right window but the left is an exact mirror image.

While Hidden Pulleys, Part 1 was super hard, it helped me quite a bit to expect the unexpected when it came to this project. Overall this took about 5-6 hours to complete. A “normal” sash is something I can easily get new sash cords on in an hour or less, for perspecitve.

I am lucky to get to work with lovely homeowners and this one was very grateful for my efforts. It was truly a delight to get these windows functioning again and to learn so much from the process. While it was another wrestling match and quite difficult at times, I was very pleased with the results.