I mean, I'm not I'm not sure all built environments are worth preserving. There's a lot of um Soviet era block apartments that I I'm not sure there's any uniquely human value in preserving. They weren't built for beauty and they're not beautiful. And if they if they don't exist in the future, that's fine. But where I live in the neighborhood I live in, um, the late 1800s and the early 1900s in terms of arts and crafts style, there was an enormous amount of human thought and intention that went into preserving principles of beauty like proportion and balance and light.
Um, I've taken on a role in our communion properties of kind of being the resident window restoration expert. Um, I restored nine wooden double hung windows in our own home rather than having them ripped out and replaced with vinyl. And since doing that, um, I've kind of mastered the techniques of wooden window preservation and I've been very involved in the properties specifically when there's window issues. Um, but if you look at a home built in the early part of the 20th century and look at the square footage of windows in it versus the square footage of windows that'll be put into almost any new build now, you will be startled.
They were extravagant with windows for all kinds of reasons in in the era. Um, but natural light is a beautiful thing for a human being to to live in. Um, and these homes are full of natural light. And my home is a very modest 1,200 ft home. And I think if I'm remembering correctly, we have 27 large windows in my very modest home. You're not going to get 27 windows in a 12,200 square foot home that's built today.
Um, so, so, but na, so, so one, okay, putting enormous amounts of windows into a home creates natural light in the home. That's that's beautiful. That's wonderful. And when you rip out those old windows and replace them with vinyl, most people are not going to be able to say, they're not going to be able to articulate what has went wrong. But your eye does see what went wrong. The proportions are no longer right in those windows.
The way in which the frame interacts with the trim reduces the size of the windows and the sashes and your eye no longer sees the balance that was there. They were built with a certain proportionality and balance and you cannot replicate that with a replacement window. They're going to be very nice, very very expensive replacement windows. It is some of them do a better job than others. I got to give that credit. But it is almost impossible to actually replicate the proportionality of them.
And so like when you preserve that, you preserve an integral part of the beauty of the structure. You preserve the beauty of the built environment in which a human being lives. You were talking about the importance of environmental values for EOC and that that's true and that's really important. The way I see that influencing my work with windows is um most replacement windows that you're going to put in are not going to last more than about 30 years.
If you get 30 years out of that window, you're doing really good. Um even high quality, high-end ones, by the time 15, 20 years rolls around, you probably got some leaks, some cracks, the vinyl has shrunk, or you know, you're facing window problems. By 30 years, you're ready to replace them again. If you will maintain and restore your wooden windows, which in many cases at this point on the East Coast, your your wooden windows are probably pushing 200 years old.
Here in the Midwest, our our wooden windows are pushing a hundred years old. There's no reason they won't last another hundred years. If you're concerned about environmental sustainability, you should restore and preserve your wooden windows. They take maintenance. It's a lot of work. There's reasons people don't want to do it, but if you But for environmental reasons, you should do it.
