Sunday, May 04, 2008
New window opening
Almost finished the new window for the downstairs office this afternoon. There is a little stonework inside to do but basically the window is in.
The window frame was made from some oak beams of 10cm by 20cm sections to take a 60cm by 75cm window. That's the internal dimensions of the window. The window is actually about 4cm larger all around as it is fitted to the inside face of the frame. Just for fun and a little authenicity I used oak pegs to made the joints in the frame. Because the joints in the frame might leak on the window sill there are two channels cut into the underside of the sill and a plastic membrane running under the sill and up behind the window. Hopefully this should allow and water to drain away outside, rather than collect in the wall and cause a damp problem inside.
Making the hole in the stone wall is a little scary, as the hole always seems to end up about twice the size that you need it because of errant large stones. From the photo you can see the inside beam at the top of the hole that protudes right into the wall. The new window was deliberately positioned right under this beam so that I only needed to use one acro prop to support all the stone above the window. As you can see quite a lot of stone still falls out which all needs putting back in. Personally I use quite a dry mix of mortar so that there is very little 'cement water' that seeps out to stain the face of the stonework. Any mortar is also raked out at this stage to leave a gap between the stones for pointing later.
The inside of the window is just shuttered with some old planks and concrete used to fill out the inside wall. I used a couple of bits of oak beam to make the internal lintel then infilled with stone above. The internal lintel is not shown in this photo. The internal stonework and concrete has to wait until the external stonework is complete, but not all the external stonework can be done at once. Therefore this whole process has taken several days, by building up several layers of stone outside, backfilling with concrete, then more outside stonework etc. etc.
Personally I pretty pleased with the end result. Things are really starting to move along quite swiftly and the downstairs rooms should start taking shape soon.
| 7:17:19 PM
New window opening
