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Timber conservation & restoration for windows, doors & timber framed buildings in Bristol, Somerset & the South West.
I believe every carpenter / joiner should be offering their services to do conservation and restoration work. It is easy to just offer to replace everything with something new as this is relatively straight forward. Often is the case that things can be conserved and if done well this can extend the life of timber for decades to come.
We have one of the largest proportions of old housing stock in this country and conserving it and its character should be at the heart of everything we do. It saddens me to see so many beautiful houses with plastic windows and doors these days.
Traditional windows and doors really are such important architectural features of our buildings in this country and so many have been lost and we continue to lose many at an alarming rate with quite frankly ugly plastic replacements being fit. These replacements offer little understanding of geometry and proportion with only pretend nods to the past.
There is however a lot of "band aid" restoration that happens using plastic paints and chemical fillers that I believe is actually increasing the rate at which much of this historic timber is degrading. Similar to how the overuse of cement based products in unsuitable situations is ruining much of the masonry work we see around us.
I am passionate about traditional and natural materials. I use appropriate lime mortars for pointing in windows and doors and making masonry repairs and I use linseed putty's and paints for timber work and repairs. These products are historically accurate and suitable for the buildings we conserve. They allow the main building fabrics (timber, stone, brick etc) to work as they should and manage moisture correctly.
Victorian canopy porch restoration, Totterdown, Bristol.
The process.
The only way to restore things properly is to carefully strip the paint without losing any of the detail of the mouldings or without destroying the crisp edges of the joinery. We don't attack things with sanders, we carefully strip the paint using heat guns and detailed paint stripping scrapers. We can then identify the rotten parts, cut them out and splice in new timber. We can then start to rebuild, reforming any original joinery. I don't use plastic paints, chemical fillers or rot hardeners.
We finish by either treating the wood with a natural oil, or if it is to be painted then we use natural linseed oil paint - allowing the wood to breath throughout the seasons while still offering very good protection against the weather.
Inevitably water will find a way in, whether thats by running down glass or into small gaps in joints. What's important is that the water can find its way out again. This is what prevents rot. This is what linseed oil paints are so good at. Historically these paints contained lead and they were very good but for obvious reasons they now don't.
I believe this is part of the reason that so many historic painted sash windows have lasted so long. Covering them in plastic paint is unfortunately not the right way to go. Of course some of the other reasons are to do with how well the joinery was constructed and the use of many high quality, slow grown, resinous softwoods like pitch pine.
Making up mouldings in the workshop, Chelvey, Bristol.
Timber frame conservation work, Somerset, UK.
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