Sash window repairs and restoration in Camden

Camden's housing stock runs from late-Georgian and Regency terraces around Regent's Park and Camden Town, through the mid-Victorian villas of Belsize Park and Hampstead, to the Edwardian mansion flats of Bloomsbury and West Hampstead. Most still have their original box sash windows: four-over-four and two-over-two sashes in the Victorian streets, six-over-six and margin-light sashes in the earlier terraces. The common faults are the same everywhere: rotten bottom rails and cills from decades of failed paint, broken cords, lost weights, draughts at the meeting rail, and sashes painted shut.

Draughts are the commonest complaint about Camden's sashes. The tall windows of a Primrose Hill or Camden Town terrace, and the large two-over-two sashes of Kentish Town and Belsize Park, have usually lost their fit over a century of shrinking timber and repainting. We draught-proof them by routing grooves into the sashes and new beads and fitting brush and compression seals, then re-cording and rebalancing so the windows still run freely. The work is done from inside and nothing changes from the street, so it needs no consent in any of Camden's conservation areas. It stops rattles, cuts street noise noticeably, keeps the original sashes in use, and carries a five-year guarantee, provided the seals have not been damaged by a third party, adjusted or tampered with.

Internal work that preserves the street-facing elevation