Hello to all London residents, north, south, east and west.
January is over and although most of us don’t like to wish our lives away, January’s darkness is good to be done with and to see a significant rise in the height of the sun at noon.
Right now is a good time to plan for the spring, before the warm weather is upon us and begins slipping away like beach sand through our fingers.
On the outside of our homes ageing has been happening and appearance is important.
We like to dress well, out of self-respect but also so as not to be an eyesore to our fellows.
So it is with painting a house. But of course house painting is additionally incentivised by the avoidance of damage to the fabric of the building.
Damage can be avoided, not only to the painted wood, but also by doing some while-one-is-there things like checking gutters and garden soil height that may have risen above the Damp Proof Course-DPC.
I’m talking here today about outside painting, although we also take on interior decorating, including expert paper-hanging.
Anyway, onto my favourite subject; using the best available products.
During several decades in the business I’ve tried many products in a quest (yes quest, because it’s been a challenge) to find not just ideal products but products that are fit for purpose, and believe me, in the 80’s the only available wood filling products were not fit for purpose.
My long and arduous search for a decent wood repair product led me to Holland where a Dutch chemist had applied modern chemistry to the problem of filling holes in wood.
The company that produces this unequalled product is called:
www. Repair-Care International
They have a good website now and your former enthusiasm for chemistry might just be revitalised looking at the pictures that show what beautiful repairs can be accomplished with these resins of substance.
WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL
You won’t find the following anecdote on the Repair-Care website but it’s an interesting and true story.
If however you’re short of time you can skip this bit and just call us up forthwith for a quote.
Around the year 1999 the Winchester Cathedral maintenance schedule called for replacement of the lead roof.
This is done once every 150 years and was last done in 1850 by Victorian carpenters who had also undertaken repairs to the close-boarded roof timber that supports the lead. The 1850 timber repairs were extraordinary, with repair-joints unknown to our 1999 carpenters who threw up their hands, breathed in through their teeth and admitted defeat.
Their modern skill-set didn’t include Victorian repair skills, the likes of which included repairing a cannon ball hole in the side of a man-o’-war, leaving it watertight.
Help however was nearby as the very same Repair Care rep who taught me happened to be in Winchester and was able to overcome the problem of replicating the extinct woodworking joints.
“You see.” he said
“Repair Care requires a 10 or more millimetre gap between timbers in order to work its chemical magic. Therefore the carpenters need not precisely join up the replacement timber. “
“Gaps in joints, not only don’t matter, they are in fact what is needed.”
And so with simpler, gap abundant joints, the timber of the roof was repaired using Repair-Care resin to soundly join the timbers.
The lead went back on and in year 2149, when next the lead is replaced we will surely see how well the millennium joints have faired.
But you as a customer of JP TAFFE need not wait that long.
Have a look at our repairs in 5 years time and if they’ve failed I’ll eat my hat or repair the work-whichever you choose.
Happy 2021. And in the words of Bob Marley, if you wake up in the morning and the birds are singing then
“Don’t worry about a thing, cos every little thing gonna be alright.”
Joe