Well, this weekend saw my partner Polly and I tackle our first sash
window renovation. I've had ome excellent advice on this, and I
promised to post the results - as it happens, we haven't finished, but
I'll post the results so far, anyway...

We put out a request for help to our friends and were very gratefully
surprised to get four helpers showing up on Saturday morning (just)
and displaying levels of enthusiasm that stunned us! We provided
sandwiches for lunch, and curry and wine for dinner...

I had started on Friday evening by removing the staff beads and
furniture so the first task was to remove the sashes. The inner came
out easily, the parting bead was a doddle, but the outer sash took
even more cajoling than I had expected; this was not helped by a very
loose joint which we were trying to be careful not to stress too much.
The sashes went out to the garden and the girls started stripping
(the paint from the sashes, unfortunately).

The sealing around the outside of the frame proved to be very loose,
so we decided to pull it all out and replace it. There turned out to
be a large gap on the left side between the stonework and the frame,
and on pulling out the cement we found that the gap had been stuffed
with newspaper. Eventually we pulled out a fragment with the date at
the top: Friday 22 February 1924!

Work went more slowly than I had expected (and there was more to do)
but by the end of Saturday we had stripped all the woodwork, cleared
out all the debris from the sash pockets, filled the gaps with
expending foam, painted the cill with fibreglass resin and started the
painting, so we all settled down to a well deserved round of Thai
curry and New Zealand wine!

By Sunday morning, through our bleary, hungover eyes, it became
obvious that we were never going get both coats of Ranch paint dry in
time, so we elected to go and get a board to cover the window and take
our sweet time over it. By the end of Sunday we had sanded down the
foam and sealed the exterior of the frame with silicone, first coated
everything and stripped all the paint off the brasswork, so we screwed
the board in place over the window and sat back, pretty exhausted.

All we need to do now is second-coat all the woodwork and reassemble -
most of the hard work is done. I think we've made more of a meal of
it than perhaps more experienced DIYers would have, but then we've
stripped it back to bare wood and started virtually from scratch. I'm
so pleased with the state of all of the wood given its (minimum) age,
and it seems worth doing a really good job and not cutting any
corners.

Thanks everyone for all the advice. I'll post the final results when
they're done, possibly on Wednesday (depends how much we can get done
in the evenings).

Cheers - Adam...

Adam wrote in message
By Sunday morning, through our bleary, hungover eyes, it became
obvious that we were never going get both coats of Ranch paint dry in
time, so we elected to go and get a board to cover the window and take
our sweet time over it. By the end of Sunday we had sanded down the
foam and sealed the exterior of the frame with silicone, first coated
everything and stripped all the paint off the brasswork, so we screwed
the board in place over the window and sat back, pretty exhausted.
Landed on your feet with the weather eh? Pinning the sahes back in the frame
saves boarding up between work sessions and allows both sides to dry.
How did the fibreglass resin work out? Last time I used it the hardener was
a paste, which made it difficult to disperse evenly. Had it cured okay
overnight or were you too bleary eyed to notice?

"stuart noble" wrote in message ...
-8- snip -8-
Landed on your feet with the weather eh? Pinning the sahes back in the frame
saves boarding up between work sessions and allows both sides to dry.
How did the fibreglass resin work out? Last time I used it the hardener was
a paste, which made it difficult to disperse evenly. Had it cured okay
overnight or were you too bleary eyed to notice?

Hi Stuart,

I meant to give the resin a special mention: top tip! I acually
didn't use hardner - sat and thought about whether I'd need it or not
and decided that a) not using it would encourage better penetration
and b) if it didn't go off in a reasonable time I could always add
another layer with hardner [and also c) with the wood as a matrix it
shouldn't need it].

As it happened, it cured overnight and left a perfect surface for the
paint.

We've been very lucky with the weather, and even the drizzle that hit
almost all of Edinburgh yesterday seemed to leave us alone!

All we've got left to do is to try to work out how to fit the Mighton
draught-proofing strips and parting beads. We need to cut a 2mm wide
by 6mm deep trench in the sashes and fit the parting bead into a 12mm
wide gap (when it's supposed to go into a 8.5mm gap).

Cheers - Adam...

Adam wrote in message
Hi Stuart,

I meant to give the resin a special mention: top tip! I acually
didn't use hardner - sat and thought about whether I'd need it or not
and decided that a) not using it would encourage better penetration
and b) if it didn't go off in a reasonable time I could always add
another layer with hardner [and also c) with the wood as a matrix it
shouldn't need it].

As it happened, it cured overnight and left a perfect surface for the
paint.

Cured without the catalyst? Well, I'll take your word for it but....

All we've got left to do is to try to work out how to fit the Mighton
draught-proofing strips and parting beads. We need to cut a 2mm wide
by 6mm deep trench in the sashes

Quite easy with a router I should think, although 2mm is a mighty small
cutter size.

and fit the parting bead into a 12mm
wide gap (when it's supposed to go into a 8.5mm gap).

For that I would grease/vaseline one edge of the bead and pin it in
position. Fill to the edge of the 12mm gap with car body filler (you *will*
need the hardener this time:-)). The bead should then fit snugly, and be
removeable. Forget the grease if you're confident you won't have to remove
it for any reason.