Window wonders

“What magic is this?” remarks Laura as she arrives to see Glynn repairing the sitting room window.

Glynn is spending his Sunday (and only day off ) repairing our centre-piece window, splicing new oak into the old where it is too rotten to be saved. You can see how rotten and warped the sill is, this is the first thing to be removed. A Strongboy Acro Prop is installed to support the top of the window frame just in case, and a batten is fixed temporarily to the frame to keep it square.

The stone immediately under the window has to be removed as it has pushed upwards so much that Glynn cannot get the new flat sill in. Tom will chisel the stone down and fit it back in once the window is finished.

You can see how rotten the window mullions are at the bottom. Centuries of water ingress and a few decades of rotting behind all the cement and layers of paint.

Glynn chiselling the end stones a little so he can fit the new sill on top.

The whole wall underneath this window had moved upwards, pushing the window sill upwards and warping the frame.

Glynn had to trim the mullions higher than we had hoped due to the poor condition of them. The mullions on the sides were especially rotten because they were covered in cement.

This is the rotten timber that has been cut out. There was definitely no saving this!

This is the sill from the middle of the window. It had warped to this very pronounced curve!

The complicated process of fitting new, straight oak into old, wonky oak begins…

Measure twice, cut once. The new oak sill is positioned in place and the gaps where the replacement mullions will sit are measured.

Glynn marks out the position of the mullions in the sill.

Preparing to cut the sill where the mullions will slot into it.

The sill gets positioned in place again to check and measure. You can see the slots have been cut for the new mullions.

And these are the new mullions waiting to be fitted. The shape of the profile is fabulous. They don’t make ’em like they used to!

It’s all beginning to take shape!

It’s a proper head scratcher though. The window is so wonky, warped and old (aren’t we all), it is going to require a great deal of customisation to make it all fit.

Look at the grain on that!

Glynn is very chuffed that it all fits. A bit of fine tuning and it will be finished.

The two frames will now get fixed together then the fine tuning begins to get all the twiddly bits to line up.

The mullions after the fine tuning.

The iron bars installed in the new oak.

The finished article. WOW. A super posh window and worth all the hard work and head scratching. This was our favourite window when we bought the house, but we love it even more now! This window was painted shut and we’ve never been able to open it, but today we opened it for possibly the first time in decades.

Cat adding a coat of oil to protect the new oak from marking.

A work of art I think you’ll agree! Glynn worked so hard to get this done in a day and we are absolutely delighted with how it has turned out. Thank you so much Glynn! See you next weekend for the next window?!?