Sorry to hear it is so bad there. If you have a favorite(or expensive plant) could you make a covering for them. they take heavy plastic here,comes on 100 ft roll at Home Depot, & make a framework & cover the framework with the plastic.Even the top is enclosed. Most people use 1x2 in wood with upright every 4-6 ft. The plants are not tightly enclosed at the bottom & may have mulch or hay around the bottom but with some air space. They leave that on all winter. I've seen small trees with 2x4 frame covering the whole tree with plastic, which is several inches above top of tree so plastic is not touching the tree & it has some room to grow & the bottom foot there is no plastic but maybe branches & leaves out away from trunk. Many people do this & trees are fine after the plastic is removed. I've covered plants by throwing old sheets & blankets over them & when it suddenly gets hot have to run out & pull them back but that works quite well, I sometimes turn lawn furniture over to protect a hibiscus as they freeze easily & then pin a sheet over top using furniture to hold it on.I have 12in. wide cedar boards around my mini rose garden as wind just striped them & they started dying so just that protects them enough. If it got to 20 degrees tho I would throw a sheet over whole garden & hold in place on edges with bricks. My orange tree-I stand on ladder & use doubled king size sheets & wrap around lower part of tree on sections out from house, pinning the ends of sheets around a sturdy branch as needed use 3 connected together & that saves oranges. Oranges on top of tree are ruined each yr since we have started getting such frosts. My outside faucets I wrap with plastic bags& use handles to secure them, just 2 grocery bags in tan color so they don't look like eyesore!!My side water pipes I put that pipe insulation that is foam looking(kids like to play with the "long pieces like it was a baseball bat) then I cover them with couple of old sweatshirts pinned on & try to match color of house with the top covering so about 6 layers of sweatshirt fabric, old fleece blankets would work also. I do this as DB got up 1 day to discover he had a fountain of shooting water turning to ice in neighbor's yard. Big expense if something like that happened so I just prevent it. I wash this stuff up & store in garage until needed each fall. Hope this helps! We were also smart when we bought the house & came & insulated the outside walls evenings by car headlights & I later pushed all loose insulation into odd spaces in attic & laid down foil backed insulation all over so my house is well insulated. Jan

Donna, Blaine is one of the northern suburbs of the Twin Cities; we are directly west on Lake Minnetonka, as Kate guessed. It would be so much fun to have visitors, if you ever get up this way again. Kate, Lord Fletcher's is still very much a place to be on a hot summer evening, and, yes, they still have Sunday brunch. Can't wait to put our boat in. This week, weather willing.

Hi - Thanks to all of you for your suggestions. I got caught up in a (non-DYI) project and didn't have a chance to reply sooner. Sombreuil_mongrel - Good info. I didn't know that the optimal surface temp was that high. This is an indoor project, and the air temp was probably about 68-70 degrees, not so low that it wouldn't have worked, even it needed more time. However, maybe my stripper wasn't as fresh as it should have been, I was using stripper from a can I opened about 2 months ago - would that make a difference? I was using a paste stripper which may not have as long a shelf life as a liquid one. Also, I forgot about the possibility of milk paint. I didn't have any ammonia in the house, so I picked some up to test. If I wipe the paint with an ammonia-soaked rag, the color comes off on the rag. (Unlike the other layers, which are white, the problem paint is dark and appears to be a mixture of green, red, and brown.) I wouldn't say that the paint is really dissolving, though. If it is milk paint, how do you use the ammonia? Just keep wetting it and scraping? I'm not worried about discoloring the wood, since I'll be repainting it. (The paint was in terrible shape - there was no way I would be able to get an acceptable paint job without removing the old paint.) weedyacres - I didn't want to try a heat gun for I couple of reasons. I knew someone (a smart, generally responsible person) who set fire to his home using a heat gun to remove paint. If he could do that, just about anyone could. I don't really like working with chemical strippers, but I'm too nervous to use a heat gun, especially since I'm working indoors. Aside from that, I'm working on a stairway with no outlets nearby, so I'd have to use a long extension cord, which would be a tripping hazard. I do own a heat gun, though, and I'll try it the next time I have a project where I can work outdoors, away from the house. petchie - Six months? You deserve some sort of award. Must look great. (Maybe that's the reward.) Fortunately, my spindles were never painted, which is why I thought THIS PROJECT would be the proverbial piece of cake - flat surfaces, small work areas, no intricate detail. I thought I could manage 2 or 3 risers an evening and was in for a shock. This paint is unlike anything I've ever worked with. Btw, it occurred to me that the abrasive kite string (manjha) that they use in places like India and Afghanistan for competitive kite-flying might be a great tool for getting into grooves. It's covered with crushed glass. (The idea is to cut down your competitor's kite by sawing through its line,) annkh - I like Citristrip too, when it works. It's so much easier to use. It was the first thing I tried on my stairs, but it only worked on the top layers. I tried re-applying, but it didn't seem to have any effect on this particular paint. It was terrific on some of the other woodwork I stripped that had normal paints, although I had to do at least two applications, once for the latex paint on top, which separates from the other layers, and once for the older paints underneath. klem1 - Thanks for the tip. I didn't know about the Behlens product. I'll look into it. Do you know of any brick-and-mortar stores that sell it, or do you have to buy it on the web? Thanks again everyone for all the help! Here is a link that might be useful: Manja or manjha - abrasive kite string

I wouldn't say "NEVER wood", or "ALWAYS triple pane", but I do think that in that climate (similar to my own) both are solid advice in most cases. @Todd, what RH levels do you have in this home if you aren't seeing condensation in single digits and subzero weather? Sheesh. Do you not receive a rash of condensation calls from your customers anytime the weather gets frigid? While condensation can cause issues with windows of any material depending on severity and a variety of factors, are you insinuating that wood units DON'T have issues far more frequently, and to a much higher degree of damage (ie: complete loss)? Are you also comparing older (old growth) wood windows to modern units in terms of their susceptibility to moisture damage? In a couple of decades, I can't remember the last time that I serviced a seal failure due to condensation accumulation, but we most certainly replace 8-25 year old wood windows rotted due to condensation damage on the daily. Seems like you are being a little coy and/or contrarianistic (if thats a word?) with some of these answers... most of this stuff is common knowledge for folks around the replacement window business.