Take a screw driver or knife-something to poke at the paint with, and wherever you see a suspect area, give it a poke and see if the knife goes into the wood like it wasn’t even butter.
Look at places where the paint is wrinkled or shrunk, as sometimes the paint surface remains intact and the wood rots and shrinks behind the paint surface.
Chances are, you will find rot in places where there have been previous repairs-where earlier rot was not handled successfully.
The correct handling of rotted wood has been in the past, more a problem of lack of technology and not always lack of care.
But now we have the technology to effect a permanent repair and save the old sash windows to slide another day. Those old windows have been there 100 years and more because they were constructed of superior timber, properly seasoned and treated with the patience of those Victorian and Edwardian saints.
My firm likes old windows. We think the Victorian sash window is a national treasure and should be kept.
Now thanks to some modern chemistry, we can keep them going and going.
We have a product that does the three things that two pack, epoxy wood filler doesn’t do.
1. It won’t shrink
2. It is slightly flexible. (a slammed window won’t therefore dislodge it)
3. It forms a chemical bond onto the wood. (This is the best of the three points and a breakthrough for painters who care)
See the Repair Care website for more information:
http://www.repair-care.com
Of course the painter must be trained in it’s use, and all the rotted wood needs to be removed so that the new resin can bond to wood that is alive.
Did you know that the cells of wood are still alive after 100 years?
How many painters know that, apart from ourselves at J P Taffe Decorating and Property Maintenance?
Give us a call, if like us, you like old windows.
Have a look at this link to see how we do it.