Dear Arlosmom, I spoke to my carpenter and I looked at my pulleys. My pulleys are smoothly rounded out, not grooved. Carpenter says he has never come across a grooved pulley and has still changed out cords to chains, as he did on mine. He says that sash cords are standard 3/8" and he replaced mine with 3/8" chain. If 3/8 is not available to you, you can go a little larger, but stay under 1/2". At 1/2" they are too fat to work well in the pulley. As far as how to attach chain to weight, there is a loop on the top of the weight. You don't need any special hardware. His method with mine was to put the chain through the loop and hook the chain back onto itself by opening up a link and hooking it back onto another link then closing the link back up. He said depending on size of your weight's loop, you might use a wire if the chain won't go through. He advised that you must see to it that your pulleys are working smoothly. If they are gunked up with paint, be sure to scrape them so that they function well and don't rub on any window parts, because a smooth-working pulley is key to smooth-working windows. Any other questions, feel free to ask! Best, FW

No, it needs paint. It will always get wet in the rain, unless you have storm windows closed, and if water soaks in to the end grain, the paint above will peel. It has to be dry, then sand to bare wood and soak in a mixture of boiled linseed oil and turpentine to fill all the wood's porosity. When this mixture dries, prime with oil primer. As for finish coats, I use only oil enamel on the sash, because it lets them move freely and never sticks. It seems whenever I try any kind of waterborne paint, I end up with sticking sash. I always paint sash while they are out, both sides, and let the paint cure; I get by with the storm windows in the meantime, but it is the only way to fully paint the surfaces without painting anything shut. You can leave that milling hole on the bottom; it's actually a good thing, as it lets water drain out of the bottom corner joints.(not that there should be an water there, but caulking it full plugs the drain) Casey

Hi, I have Pella double hung windows that are approximately 15 years old. They are the old double pane design where the inside pane could be removed to put blinds or mutins between the glass panels. As long as I can remember the sashes on a couple of them do not line up where the window latch is. The lower sash sticks up about 1/4+ inch higher. This creates a problem in the winter. It creates a small dam where a lot of condensation forms that then wicks up between the glass panes. Does anybody know if there is an adjustment to fix this? The windows do open and close fine so I don't think it's a problem with window squareness. I called Pella today and they indicated the windows are no longer in warranty. They want $100/hour to come look at them.

Thanks all! Especially for pics, was having trouble find ones that had both trim and drapes with black sashes that I liked but those made me feel better about both. These windows have removable grids that we found in attic when we bought home, so we’ll just paint them black and snap them back on and voila!