You have to start early. In the hot weather, this is a great
advantage! Be careful not to let the paint run into the sliding
joints (don't put too much on) or it will stick your windows up,
oil or water-based. Let the windows dry through the day, you
can close them gently and open them again next day for glossing.
You may need to plan a "rota".

I was planning to remove the windows totally for painting in the back
garden. I'll just leave the holes overnight, rather than risk damaging the
undercoat.

Unfortunately, I've not got any time to do it until maybe October now.
There's just too much other stuff to do. I've got to replace the bath waste
tonight. It was held on with some crumbly powder that didn't survive having
the trap removed for rodding this morning. Then there's the kitchen, the
electrics and the central heating to sort out.

Good God. Someone is really ham-fisted painting!

You should see the rest of the house. Barely a floor board nailed down. (I
actually quite like this, as it is very helpful installing cable TV,
intruder alarm, extra sockets, central heating etc.)

Use good-quality sash cord when you replace them, should last
a *long* time! Don't get paint on the sash cords.

Do you recommend natural or synthetic sash cords?

I was told by a local glazing company that they could make
sealed units 14mm thick, so there would still be some moulding
left on the vertical bar if we did go ahead.

You *can* get 12mm - 4-4-4 instead of 4-6-4.

Interesting. With 8mm difference (assuming 4mm SG glass), I don't lose any
of the steps on the moulding. The bars are quite deep at the moment.

If the boxes are still there, you should be safe from the
bloody pen-pushers. A local joinery firm should be able to
make to measure.

Still haven't had time to look. Assuming the worst, are sash boxes normally
just made out of standard joinery, or is it better to buy them made to
measure with the frames?

No, it doesn't. The mail account that I'm using to post via a
mail2news gateway does that. I can't help it, it's not my
software. I wish I could!

You may be able to do it manually, although it is a bit of a faff.

View the headers of the message you are replying to. There should be a line
similar to:

Message-ID:

Now copy and paste this into the first line of your reply, but change
"Message-ID" to "References".

It may or may not work, depending on your mail2news gateway and your mail
program.

Christian.