Broken Window (by sarah)
Sigh.
The house is very damp, unsurprisingly as there is a river running under bits of the structure, all be it the garage! And apparently the only way to get rid of this damp is to open windows, unfortunatly the window frames have swollen and it has been freezing so I did not want to open a window we may not be able to shut, in fact as we are still getting frosts here I didnt really want the windows open at all - its hard enough to keep the place warm as it is.
But the weather was nice it was almost a summers day outside so we opend the bedroom window, having switched all the heating off, and yes it got rid of a lot of the damp but then it started getting dark and we tried to close the windows.
The frame was so swollen that we had had to bash at the frames to open them, the same technique did not work to close them. And a frost had started settling so we did not want to leave it ajar. Our solution?
A bit drastic but something we thought wouldnt be too bad - we sanded the frames but alas there was just too much of an over hang of window and window frame so off Al went to get the plain. We plained it and got it shut.
This was a few days ago and the damp was gone - for a while - this morning I noticed the condensation on the windows again and told Al to open them whilst I was out at meetings.
This he did and it all appeared fine until he came to shut them up again to get me and Jean. The window frame at the bottom turned out to be rotten so when he attempted to 'slam' the window shut the bottom which for some reason is more swollen hit the window frame and sheared a bit off - yes it was that rotten and twisted the whole frame so that the glass in the bottom panel cracked 🙁
This is going to be a bit of a pain. Al wants to put a metal bracket on the wood to hold the frame together but this of course relys on us being able to find descent non rotten root to screw into - something that may well be impossible. Also this is a very short term fix and it looks like we will have to be replacing at least one window frame and one panel of glass 🙁
Now I do not believe that the frame has become that rotten in just the 1.5 yrs we have lived here - grrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!
Building Maintenance | sarah | 
Sat 17th Mar 2007 12:09 am
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