With the cost of a replacement wooden conservatory running into the 10’s of thousands, good quality repairs are a very cost-effective way of restoring spaces like conservatories and garden rooms.

By using acetylated pine, the areas most susceptible to rot are repaired in the most rot-resistant material possible, effectively making them better than the original.

There’s also very little disruption with no heavy demolition work or construction required.

And since the repairs are in real wood, they’re just as strong and easy to maintain  as the original.

The hardwood sill of this conservatory was suffering from rot in a few areas, the worst being the mitre at the corner which was opening up and allowing rainwater in. A butterfly tie that was used to pull the mitre together had almost rusted away completely.

The customer had caught the issue in time, so a full sill replacement wasn’t necessary and we were able to machine the sill back to good wood fairly quickly. The challenge with this type of repair is machining the original sill perfectly flat. If it’s not perfect, a good strong bond between the original sill and the repair can’t be achieved. The longest section of this sill was 3.5 meters long! Using a reliable straight edge gives a good indication of how flat the machining is but the acid test is being able run a quality no. 5 Sheffield steel smoothing plane from one end to the other and obtain a single paper-thin shaving. By looking closely at the shaving, you can spot any tiny areas of unevenness and correct them.

The next challenge was getting the mitre perfect. If the conservatory was built even a little out of square it would show up in a 45-degree mitre. Tweaking the mitre until the fit exactly matched the corner of the conservatory showed it was ¼ of a degree out of square. Now everything was fitting perfectly, it was time to glue up and tidy up!

Whilst the glue was setting, we used the time to replace the rotten beading around the windows to stop rainwater getting into the sashes.