Monday 14 July 2008

Really Really Old Sash Windows

One of the most requested jobs Silver Saints Handyman Service undertakes is the repair of broken sash window cords and spiral sash balances. But our London handy men also get requests to repair sash windows that just aren't in balance and won't stay open. I'm sure we've all experienced the problem, you open a sash window and as soon as you let go of it, it slides closed.

The reason is that the counter weights on either side of the window are not heavy enough to keep the window up. The answer is to add an extra lead weight, called a make weight, to the current window weights.

Our handy man Don, undertook just this job for a media company in Covent Garden last week. The interesting part of this job was that they had a dozen windows which seemed to be over a hundred years old, which still had the original Victorian 2mm thick glass in them. As a result Don had to be extremely careful in the way he handled the windows.

It was amazing to see young creatives sitting at ikea desks with multiple flat screens using the latest the Apple software to edit films and documentaries while starring out a window that is 150 years old.

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