Greeting, fellow netizens! I have a bit of a house update for today.
The windows on my 91-year-old craftsman house look to be original. Of course, the plan was to switch them out for new ones eventually. I actually intended to do most of them myself (with a helper, of course).
I watched videos. I priced windows. I did the research and had a somewhat solid plan going.
Then I joined a subreddit called centuryhomes, which is for people to discuss their 100+ year-old homes. If you don’t know, a subreddit is like a message board, basically.
Someone asked if the owners of the century homes could go back in time and ask the previous owners not to update certain parts of the house, what would those be.
One user mentioned the windows. They would’ve preferred to keep the original windows over the vinyl (or whatever) replacements. And that blew my mind a bit. Keep the windows?
And then I looked at mine, which definitely need work, but are they unsalvageable? No. And the main parts of the frames are made of solid wood that matches the trim on the wall.
Would new windows look better/fancier than the restored versions of the windows that are already there? Probably not.
So I guess it’s time for a new round of research: antique window restoration. This should be interesting.
Professional Stringer of Words 
My boyfriend has a 1913 bungalow and has the same problem. The windows are so frail with spaces between window and wall. The historical neighborhood assoc won’t allow new windows, so it’s either restore or get someone to hand build replacements, which is hugely expensive. Let us know how it goes.
Oh, man. That’s unfortunate. It’s one thing to choose but different when someone is telling you how to handle your house, especially if there’s a problem like that. You might try the centuryhomes subreddit. The people on there have great information. Here’s a link if WP will let me post it: https://www.reddit.com/r/centuryhomes/