The window man cometh

You might remember me mentioning that our windows need attention, specifically in the bathroom and toilet, whose refurbishment is now only three weeks away! (*thrill!!*) In fact, I ordered the new suite, taps, wastes, lights, shower tray, cubicle and door on Friday. We still haven't chosen any tiles, but that's mainly because the samples are still on order.

So here on the left is the bathroom window the way it looked yesterday, before we took the blind down and removed anything breakable from the vicinity. Our nice window man arrived as planned this morning to take care of things. As it happens, it's a nice dry sunny day here in Manchester. This is just as well, since refurbishing a sash window entails taking the whole thing apart, cleaning it all up, replacing any worn or broken bits, fitting the modern draft-proofing, and putting it all back together again.

For most of the process, you're left with an enormous hole where the window should be, so I'm very glad we didn't have him round a few weeks ago when the outside temperature was hovering around 0°C.

We're hoping that having the windows fitting properly, with up-to-the-minute draftproofing will mean we don't need to have the sashes double glazed. Even though we're not intending to restore the house to Edwardian standards I'm not keen on replacing traditional features like sash windows, or even fitting sealed units in the existing frames. Especially when they're glazed as uniquely as ours.

Here's how the window looks right now. A bit too airy to be having a bath! The draftproofing process involves cutting a channel along the edges of the window frames where they touch either the runners or each other, and sliding in a plastic carrier into which is clipped a neoprene seal. The inside edges also have nylon brushes screwed in place so once it's all done there isn't a gap anywhere between window and wood, but everything still slides as it should.

As part of the process the windows are also rebalanced to cope with any changes to the glazing that may have made the windows heavier than their counterweights. The estimates include 10lbs of lead per window for rebalancing. We're also having new brass lifts and catches, and security screws added, so when complete they should look better than new!