Anonymous wrote:OP there is a lot of fear mongering on this thread. I had the windows replaced in my 1934 colonial when my son was 6 months old. Interior trim left intact. They did not do anything special for lead abatement although I’m very sure there was lead paint (the windows were original to the house). My son and I went to my parents house for a week while the work was done even though it only took 48 hours. We ran air purifiers in the house afterwards. He did not test positive for lead at his one year appointment. Get a reputable contractor and it will be fine.

+1, nothing special was done during our renovations of a 1927 house. I had my kids tested yearly three years in a row because I was so worried and they were all negative.

We had ours replaced and have small children. We had to pay extra for lead window removal which requires more care and containment. They cleaned up anything remaining afterwards. I was concerned about lead exposure in the kids because we had done a lot of other construction in another sectioned off part of the house and my raised-by-wolves husband was a bit careless with containment on a few occasions. I had them tested and they were fine. Make sure there aren’t any lingering paint chips on the floor when they’re done (and wipe down surfaces either way).

We have almost 100 year old windows that are in “very bad” shape, as one very prominent window restoration company told us. We have 4 kids and have never had an issue with high lead results…while I would love to do away with the flaking paint chips that fall when opening the windows (which I do in the spring/fall), we just haven’t had the finances to do anything about it as we don’t want to replace them with cheap vinyl windows.

OP I did a ton of research on this and talked to a bunch of contractors when I moved into our 1926 bungalow. None of them suggested the complete tear out of the trim, one did price it for us and it would’ve been absolutely cost prohibitive. An insert window is completely safe. When the new window slides up and down it does not contact the old trim in any way. Sure, you still need to keep the trim painted over and tidy and make sure no paint chips get on the floor. Neither of my children have ever had detectable lead levels. We stayed out of the house while this work was done. We used Marvin.

I would vacuum often and leave these windows where they are until kids are old enough to participate in avoiding dust and chips—and also less in the zone for permanent lead-related brain damage. (I assume the lead paint has been painted over.)