Last of the windows

Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning… This was dead right. It was super chilly this morning and by lunchtime it had turned very wet and rained well into the evening.

Lee Boswell and his son returned to finish off the glazing on the windows. He has been delayed as the factory in Liverpool that supplies the glass has been on reduced capacity due to Covid 19 cases. The weather is changing so rapidly now that we need to make the house air tight. Everything inside, including all our lovely timber, is getting damp and the conditions are not helping the plaster to dry either.

Charlie, Alan and Mitch are coating the plaster with the PVA mix before they start the top coat today.

Bags of gypsum waiting to be mixed up.

Jasper is so delighted to be back to normal walks without a poo bag wrapped around his paw, or a cone of shame on his head. He celebrated with stick eating. This may repeat on him later, possibly on the sitting room rug.

The last leaded window to be fitted is this problematic one on the landing. There is nothing square about this window. Lee couldn’t fit it a few weeks ago as the frame needed more work so that the glass could sit flat. Glynn cut more out and added more oak fillets so there weren’t any gaps.

Charlie, Alan and Mitch are all working on the top coat of plaster, they won’t even stop for a cuppa at the moment. Today’s soundtrack is heavy rock, always good in my book, Nirvana were blaring out at this point.

Lee has added the pale putty to match the interior frame colour, the glass gets bedded into this, then black putty added on the outside. The black putty will eventually be painted in Farrow & Ball Downpipe to match the timber colour, but it looks fine as is for now.

The window in Cat’s bedroom is next, this is where we managed to save one original pane of glass (all the others broke as we were taking them out, the glass is soooo thin), so this will be going back in.

The end window in what will be Cat’s ensuite bathroom (phase 2) is the last to glaze. Lee did well as he had to stand on top of this precarious box on top of another box in the rain. By this point it was quite miserable, cold and wet. Tomorrow when Cat is back, we shall add the metal openers so we will have windows that shut! We may even remove the plastic covers 🙂

Meanwhile back up in the attic… Once the top coat of plaster is added it then gets smoothed down and the edges and corners tidied up.

You can just see Mitch plastering underneath the eaves. I did wonder how he got his face so covered today.

The lovely shape of the dormers with some of the new oak left exposed.

The shaped plaster around the chimney breast on the gable end wall looks lovely.

Our oak A-frame still with the 3-400 year old bark on!

They have finished the bulk of the attic today, just some small areas to finish on Monday. It will take a couple of weeks before it will be dry enough for painting and I am not surprised, there is so much water in the air that I have had to open all the windows as they are running with condensation!

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