From the start of our efforts to try and restore the abused Victorian house back to it’s former glory, it was always a non negotiable that we would try and restore the sash windows and that they had to be wooden rather than uPVC. The existing poor quality and clearly cheap windows had been fit in 2009 (I know this because when they took them out they had been padded with some newspaper of the time.. seems the owner or builder read a lot of the sports pages).
When we purchased the house the front looked like this:
I had to stand inside the window ledge to even open them as I couldn’t reach the windows (and I’m not THAT short at 5″3′). So we opted to replace them.. all of them, which came in at a hefty £1200 per window to have both sash and wooden. We also paid an additional £70 to have them coated. This was definitely more than we had budgeted for new windows, but I’m sharing the costs so you know what to expect and hopefully will be worth it for them to look genuine. Here’s the first floor done:
This is where it started to go wrong. The company supplying the windows measured the bay window incorrectly and although the middle window fit, the frame took up too much room. This meant that once they had fitted it, the two side panels with the opening windows were not going to fit. It curently looks like this:
The old side windows have been taken out so the gaps are being secured using a number of planks of wood forced against the openings.
Our options now are to:
- Recreate the side panels but we’re told the frame will protrude too far from the sides if we want them to be opening. Not sure what that’s about to be honest
- Replace the middle window to reduce the size it takes up (but the company won’t pay for this.. although it was their error)
- Replace the side windows with non-openable frames where the existing glass can be used and they can be fitted sooner
We’re going to go with option 3 so that we have more chance of being able to move in before a whole year is up and we’ve lost the will to fight this one. It will still be an improvement give the tiny possible opening before and we might not even notice eventually but it’s pretty frustrating as it wasn’t what we ordered.