I have an old house with many double-hung wood windows in various states of repair, many with sashes that are painted shut or sash cords that are painted over and stuck to the pulleys. It would be great to make these operational again. Some windows are old cool-looking glass, but most are newer uninteresting glass.
I considered just removing the sashes and replacing it with a block frame double hung replacement window and have already done this successfully with one of them. Unfortunately, a typical double hung vinyl window is a bit over 3" from rough opening to daylight (example from Milgard), which is a loss compared to the 1.5" on the old wood sash.
There are some contractors in the area (Seattle) doing wood window restoration, but the waitlists are months to years long and the pricing ends up being around $1000 a window, which is drastically higher than vinyl replacement windows.
What are my options? Is there anything I'm missing? Is it a feasible DIY project to do the sash restoration myself? Thanks!