WhatsApp has become our go-to tool for this; it’s easy, quick and almost ubiquitous. So, we thought why not allow the good folk of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and surrounding areas contact us via WhatsApp straight off the website!?

And why wouldn’t you want to chat with us. Colin’s quite the raconteur when he gets going!

The observant amongst you will notice our website now has a big green WhatsApp button on each page. No doubt you’ll have some questions about how to use it.

If you’re on a PC, Laptop or tablet, (you might want your mobile phone’s camera to hand to take photos of windows, doors, exterior joinery etc) click on the button and follow the 3 easy-peasy steps.

If you’re viewing the website on your phone, well that’s even easier-peasier. Head to the Contact Us page and just click the WhatsApp button. Like magic, you’re chatting with us.

You can of course still contact us via email or on the “dog and bone” in exactly the same way as before. If you email, just remember to include your phone number as it’s helpful to talk things over.

We started by repairing the damaged stile on the first sash before carefully and methodically freeing the remaining sashes from the bay.

With equal care, we removed and cleaned the hinges and tidied everything up before reassembling and getting everything working perfectly with the existing catches.

With the sash removed from the frame, the extent of the rot quickly became clear with the bottom rail pulling away from the stiles at the joint.

We remade the bottom rail in Accoya, complete with rebates and mouldings, as well as the lower sections of the stiles, then jointed everything back together. After re-cutting the hinge rebates, the sash was ready to be rehung, safe in the knowledge that it wouldn’t need any further attention for at least 50 years.

The ground floor windows of this mid C19 parkland villa had rotten sills. Designed to mirror the appearance of sliding sashes elsewhere on the building, these windows featured a fixed bottom sash and a top-hung light.

A severe plumbing leak, discovered by the new owner, had caused some damage internally so the sashes themselves were in need of attention. The extent of the damage only became fully apparent once we started work. With the sashes removed, it was easily possible to push the glazing out through the soft, rotten beading. Soon after, it was clear that all sashes needed full bottom rail replacements.

We started with the frames and sills, removing the old sills entirely and fitting custom made Accoya replacements, joined into the original jams.

We then took on the bottom rail replacements on the sashes, using Accoya once again for its rot resistance and dimensional stability. With the sashes repaired, we reglazed using the original glass and new beading.

To finish the job, we refitted the freshly repaired sashes and carried out any making-good ready for redecoration.

During the Victorian conversion of the building, the bottom rails of the sashes had been replaced as evidenced by the difference in timber and the use of a beaded face frame technique around the corners of the ovolo mouldings were the bottom rail meets the stiles. Further up the sashes, the original timber is joined into the blocks or knuckles which were common in much earlier windows.

We started my making the arched templates for any broken glass that needed replacing. While we worked on the sashes, the owner very kindly took the templates to a local glazer for cutting. To preserve the appearance of the windows, we replaced the glass like-for-like using float glass, broad restoration glass or drawn glass where appropriate

Various other repairs over the years needed assessing and we had to take very different approaches for each sash.

Lastly, the sashes were reglazed, refitted and prepared for redecoration.

The first thing we noted was that the sashes pre-dated the frame of the window. Originally a farmhouse, the building was acquired by the Rothschild family in the mid C19 and presumably the sashes were re-purposed from another of their properties. The square chamfered blocks or knuckles in the corners of the mouldings are a design que taken from some of the very earliest glazed windows in England, but the extremely thin rails and stiles date the sashes from the late C18. For the huge mouldings that make up the frame, some over 7 inches deep and nearly 5 inches wide, a local carpenter’s yard would have used wooden handplanes, scratches and gouges to form the profiles before transporting them to site where the frame of the window would have been assembled by cutting mortices, tenons and drawbores to have the window fit neatly into the sloped original timber frame of the farmhouse. These features give the building it’s unique history and make the window itself more-or-less irreplaceable.

Knowing that the window sill was in urgent need of attention, we carefully removed the sashes. This exposed several old repairs to the sashes, as well as a more recent extensive repair to the jamb on the right side. The sill itself came out in damp, rotten fistfuls and needed complete replacement.

The main concern was that the tenons on most of the upright members had rotten away in their mortises. The first job was to re-tenon these components, including their drawbores and pegs.

With the jambs and mullions back in place, we could start work on any mouldings that needed replacing. The large size and offset shape of the mouldings meant that the only reasonable method to produce the replacements was with handtools, just as the originals were. This included the need to scribe the new mouldings to the original head of the frame using gouges.

With everything prepared, we could turn our attention to the sill replacement before fitting the replacement mouldings perfectly between the head and new sill.

Being made from high quality Baltic pine, most of the panels were in good condition, despite 150 years of standing up to the elements. In the interest of preserving as much of the original door as possible, we only machined away the rotten part of the panels.

Whilst machining, we created a rebate for the repair to join to. At the bottom, we machined a groove into the bottom rail which would take a tongue of the repair.

We were then ready to made the repair sections of the door from Accoya.

This complex repair kept as much of the original door as possible whilst the use of acetylated pine for the repair means the most exposed parts of the door are protected by the best possible materials.

This new window was fitted as part of extensive modernisation work to the original 1904 Grade II listed former Police Station.

Despite appearing quite simple, this window is rich in design features; slim and elegant stiles, a turning piece with beaded edge to break-up the facade and we also copied the extra-thick 1 ¼ glazing bars on the original, which were designed to keep the apprehended in! Built in pressure treated pine, these should still be protecting and serving the occupants in another 120 years’ time.

Before the repair began, we took careful measurements of the original parts of the sash window’s pulley stiles and beading. We then made a complete replacement sill in Accoya wood.

The old repair came out easily, after which we were able to carefully separate what was left of the original sill from the pulley boxes. We could then slot in the new Accoya sill, joining it into the stiles as-per the original. We made-good between the repair and the building’s fabric using materials sensitive to those used when it was first built. Lastly, we made sure the sashes were opening and closing perfectly before fitting new draft-excluding beading, restoring the window to full working order.

After removing the sash and machining away the rotten timber, we jointed in some acetylated pine to reform the bridle joint. Accoya is as close as you can get to the quality Baltic pine that the original sash was made from and the treatment with acetic acid gives it the longest life of any available timber.

We then turned our attention to the window frame. We quickly found that the rot was into the tenon of the mullion. We machined the rot away to create a perfect surface for rebuilding and gluing the joint in Accoya. Fortunately, the customer had called us in time and the oak sill was in good enough condition to keep.

With both repairs complete, the Accoya was ready for a coat of breathable primer and we could re-putty the windows.