Blue Door Painters tip: Replacing the trim around windows and doors for managing climate control in the Washington, DC cold season
Before the weather gets cold here in Washington, DC, it’s time to think about replacing and repairing the trim around your windows and doors. ‘You want your house as tight as a drum,’ is how the saying goes, and Washington, DC winters are no exception. You may not think too much about it, but you lose a lot of heat out of your house by having rotting or decomposing wood sealing in your windows and doors. Even with perfectly functional fixtures, if the trim is rotting, air can escape through cracks and crevices, making your home less comfortable and driving your utility bill through the roof.
Wood replacement is a straightforward enough procedure. Since the trim around your doors and windows takes a beating (you may not think too much about the beating that it takes, but it gets the worst of the exterior weather, the human traffic that passes in and out, and the pressure of the structural functions that it carries out), it tends to rot and wear down more quickly than either the vinyl siding that surrounds it or the doors and windows themselves. Wood gets attacked by moisture, seeping past old cracked paint and making the organic material on the interior soggy and susceptible to organic decay. Mold, bacteria, and even insects like carpenter bees and wood borers can attack wood once the exterior coating has failed and the wood is left vulnerable. To beautify the areas around your windows and doors, and to get the area moisture-free to prepare for the coming winter, all you need to do is carefully remove the damaged wood, and replace it with fresh lumber that can then be primed, painted, and sealed against the elements.
Blue Door Painters offers wood replacement services as one of our most affordable methods of beautifying and protecting your home. It will surprise you how much better an exterior space looks after even a small section of rotting wood has been replaced. But above and beyond the aesthetic value of wood replacement, you will notice a difference in your winter heat retention and your resulting utility bills. As the air outside gets colder, its time to warm your interior up with a strong and sturdy protective shell.