Wednesday, July 11, 2018

DO IT MYSELF

I'm starting to repair a semi-rotten windowsill. The rot is in the wood and has eaten two bloody great holes in both corners. The middle of the sill is not too bad. I've scraped off most of the cracked paint and removed loads of crumbled wood, dust etc. from the holes. I know that the best solution would be to replace the sill entirely but that's not going to happen so I'm doing my usual patch-it-up-and-hope-for-the-best.

I've bought wood-filler and wood hardener but considering the depth of the holes, I'll apply the hardener and when dry, insert some filler, squish in pieces of wood cut to fit approximately then more wood filler in the gaps. Finally sand and repaint.





2 comments:

Vincent said...

That sounds to me like the right thing to do. Well done for not succumbing to UPVC. Across the road from us, the old furniture factory has been updated to accommodate 42 en-suite rooms, originally as a student hall of residence, now open to all comers. the Entrepreneur who bought it for £1m and had it converted tried putting in UPVC but we're under the Leigh St Furniture Heritage Conservation Area so they had to take them out and put in wooden sash windows instead, which are lovely but I doubt they'll keep them properly weatherproofed.

Well done for your DIY approach!

Natalie d'Arbeloff said...

The problem is not so much in the wooden window frame, though that's not in perfect condition, but only in the windowsill which is a separate block of timber and in a pretty awful state. I wih I'd never attempted this repair job, it's a lot harder than I thought because of the weird shape and uneven depth of two big holes. Oh well, I'll finish as best I can.