About Us

We are a small firm working on traditional timber sash windows in London. Sash cords, draught proofing and box sash overhauls are the whole of what we do — we are not general builders who take on windows now and again, and we do not sell replacement windows.

What we believe about old windows

A Victorian or Georgian box sash was designed to be taken apart and mended. The sashes lift out, the beads unpin, the pockets in the pulley stiles open up so the weights can be reached. Nothing about the design assumes the window is disposable, and after a hundred and fifty years most of them are still perfectly repairable. The parts that fail — cords, beads, putty, the odd length of rotten timber at the sill — are the parts that were always meant to be renewed.

That is why we push repair over replacement, and it is not sentiment. A sound original sash repaired and draught proofed will usually cost less than a replacement, keep the character of the building, and last longer than the plastic unit that would have gone in its place.

How we work

We come and look at the windows first. Some of what gets reported as “the window is broken” turns out to be a single snapped cord and half an hour's work; some of what gets reported as “just a bit draughty” turns out to be a bottom rail that has gone soft. You get a written price once we have seen what is actually there, and there is no charge for looking.

Where there is joinery to make — new beads, a spliced-in section of sill — a good deal of it is prepared off site so we are in the house for less time. We cover floors, we work clean, and we take the rubbish away with us.

Where we work

We cover Greater London: the inner boroughs with the heaviest concentration of period terraces — Islington, Hackney, Camden, Kensington & Chelsea, Hammersmith & Fulham, Westminster, Wandsworth, Lambeth, Southwark, Tower Hamlets — and out through Richmond, Ealing, Barnet, Haringey, Greenwich and Lewisham. If you are just outside the M25 it is worth asking; we can often still help.

Period and listed properties

A large part of our work is on houses in conservation areas and on listed buildings, where the original windows have to be kept and repaired. Draught proofing and cord renewal are exactly the kind of work that suits those properties: the window keeps its original glass, joinery and proportions, and the improvement is hidden inside the joint. We are happy to talk to a conservation officer where that is needed.