We done a customer recently that we have been doing for 15 years. The women has apparently been having her windows winterized each year with silicone.
You may be thinking “that isn’t so unusual, except she does it every year”.
No. What she has someone do is they silicone the windows shut the sashes. I don’t know when this started but when we went to clean this time the paint was peeling off when you tried to open the windows. It is a disaster. We ended up not opening any windows.
The crew lead had never seen something like this in all his time cleaning windows. It sounds to me that some guy heard “seal window drafts with silicone’” to mean “seal the windows shut each winter”. From what I understand it can be a good idea to seal around the frame of the window. But it seems crazy to silicone the sash itself.
So now this lady either has to never open a window again or scrap and repaint them all.
Some people are just excessively paranoid. I know a lady that tapes reflector tape all over the back of her minivan because she’s so scared to get rear ended…
she’s the victim of an idiot handyman. what you describe is NOT a common practice, it’s just simple stupidity. that’s all. now it’s time to reap what she’s sown. you are right that she only has the two options. maybe recommend she call her original handyman and see if he’ll cover the cost of refinishing the sashes he ruined?
