Have you refurbished wooden casement windows (or thinking of it?!)

[NaturalBaby]

We live in a Victorian cottage and most of the windows are single glazed with wooden frames and secondary glazing. They have had so much paint slapped on that they were all fused shut so DH has forced most of them open. We are now thinking of refurbishing them and fitting double glazed glass rather than replacing them with upvc timber lookalike windows. DH would rather refurbish them himself.

Has anyone done is and have some hints and tips to share?

Would it be better to get a man in?!

I'd get a man in, but we're both not very good at advanced day, which I'd class this as.
Also, I would go for plastic. When we moved into our Victorian place, 18 years ago, we replaced all the horrible PVC windows with double glazed wooden units. It looked lovely, but we have had to had them fixed twice, and they're rotting again!

We've been looking into replacing them but I can't decide what to replace them with, and the timber frames have such character which we can't afford to replace. DH said get upvc and add the monkey tail handles etc but it's not the same is it? I'm very tempted by the low maintenance option but don't want to throw out the wooden frames and old fashioned handles and latches. I have no idea how bad they will be in the winter and don't want to keep thick curtains closed all day for warmth.

I understand where you're coming from, and yes, wooden always looks better IMO, we're just fed up with spending the money ( plus jamming shut)

Keep them and refurbish! There are companies that will draft strip them to help with insulation. If they are original the wood will be far better than modern wood. And uPVC- bleurgh!!!!

You can get PVC that looks like wood, with the grain and everything!

We've got some catalogues for the pvc wood lookalike windows. The big problem at the moment is we had the roof looked at and pretty much condemned yesterday so looks like the windows will have to wait!