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.

Although a relatively straightforward job, the devil is in the details. With this style of beading where the bottom bead is larger and forms a drip, it’s essential to get the vertical beads just right. The Georgian style glazing bars add another detail in that the choice of pin length for fixed is critical.

With so many cuts to make, it’s important to get all these details ironed out so you can get in a rhythm and be productive.

With a more traditional approach to repairs, matching the species and grain of the original timber is important. This is a typical example of a repair failing due to a poor matching of wood species. However, with Accoya, it’s stability makes it suitable for a wider range of applications.

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.

This type of repair has two tricky areas. The first is getting the initial cut into the sill perfectly square so that the replacement section can join flawlessly with the existing sill. In this case, we needed to make two perfect cuts either side of the corner.

The second fiddly bit is getting the miter in the corner right as they aren’t necessarily a perfect 45 degrees.

This repair had a final challenge in the shape of an iron foot and plate under the corner post, which was installed when the bay was originally fitted. We needed to shape the sill around the post and foot whilst getting has much of the sill under the bay as possible to support the structure above.

With the replacement sections in place, all that was needed was a careful paring down of the new Accoya repair to perfectly match the original profile and mouldings and lastly, a coat of long life primer, ready for the decorator to continue with their work.

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.

The line of the groove can be seen in the first few photos. Over the years, the filler had cracked and allowed rain into the timber, rotting the remaining sill.

The customer was very keen to stick with timber windows to maintain the character of this lovely period family home. Joinery Shop were asked to repair the sill and any rotten sashes while we were there.

We set about removing the sashes to assess the rot to the frame of the bay. We machined away rotten areas that we found all along the sill, mullions and posts. The bay had draft proofing grooves machined into it, so we matched those with the originals in the new Accoya sill.

We then machined the bottom of the posts back to good wood before joining in Accoya to rot-proof and make good the old grooves in the corners. Finally, we carried out A repairs to the front 4 sashes which had been patched with filler.

The use of properly jointed Accoya for the bottom rails, stiles and beading means the sashes are now even better than new with a 50 year rot resistance in the key areas that are most susceptible to the weather! A really satisfying repair which restores the curb appeal of this home for decades to come.

This sill required both epoxy and Accoya repairs.

Whilst this sash was better suited to full Accoya repairs and new window beading around the double glazed units.

Lastly, we made our way around each window, adjusting the spiral balances to ensure they all worked perfectly.