Kitchen window - what to do?

[malcolm]

50% of the weight of the bath will be supported by the internal wall. Half of a bath full of water would weigh much less than the other half who could be brushing her teeth above the same lintel. :shock:

Might put a concrete lintel in - they seem to be in stock at the builders merchant. It would help reduce flexing. The joists sit directly on the lintel

 

[malcolm]

Everything is organised for the great window alteration tomorrow. I have sand, lime, bricks, a brickie and labourer, and even a lintel. I don't have window sills as they have some lead time, but I have ordered lovely Yorkstone sills and hopefully they will arrive before we come to fit the window.

Unfortunately tonight I have some dimensions of the window that will appear in a few weeks to fill the hole. The window dimensions are not quite what the hole might have been expecting, but I think everything can be made to work better than the original plan. It's a funny old job trying to organise things when you have very little experience on how things can fit together.

 

[88v8]

You seem to be doing pretty well.

Worktop... doesn't have to be a continuous run.

Because OH is vertically challenged, I made a dropped area in the worktop which she could use for cake mixing, rolling out pastry, etc. For the same reason, I also dropped the hob. It was only a couple of inches, but could have been more if necessary.
Perhaps depending on your layout, you could drop the worktop adjacent to the window.

Ivor

 

[malcolm]

The confusion over window size was because the guy making the windows left an extra inch on top to be safe because we measured up for the windows before making the hole. The window can easily be trimmed if necessary or might fit either side of the lintel depending on where that goes. The bottom of the window will be just above the worktop, raised one brick from it's original position for that reason.

The wall looked much better after the nasty old window and cemented brickwork was removed (photo on previous page if you like a shock - remind me to post the real 'before' photo when I've finished the work as it is even more horrid). The right hand side was completed today but the left hand is still to be extended and straightened. With all the modern smoke emissions rules I'm worried I might not get the soot needed to make the new bricks match.

 

[malcolm]

All done! Thanks for the help figuring this out - I think it was the right way to go, but it wasn't obvious from my starting point. The upstairs window will get a brick arch and stone sill too, and a pair of nice sash windows in the original style should finish it all off nicely.

The difference in brickwork will be fun for anyone trying to 'read the building' in the future - there is no obvious reason why the bricks to the side of the original sash would been messed with - you can tell from the arch the width hasn't been changed. Although there is also no good reason why the same original sash with original bricks beneath has a set of steps buried in the ground, so someone has played the same joke on me.

 

[plasticpigeon]

That looks really good to me.

 

[mims&pip]

Looking good

 

[Zebra]

Looking really good Malcolm. Must be encouraging to see some well-thought-out changes taking place at last, particularly after your run of bad luck....

Because OH is vertically challenged, I made a dropped area in the worktop which she could use for cake mixing, rolling out pastry, etc. For the same reason, I also dropped the hob.

I did the opposite, and made the worktop higher than normal, because Giraffe finds washing up hard on his back otherwise.

 

[malcolm]

I like the idea of setting the worktop at a height where only the other half can do the washing up.

My windows turned up yesterday! Their design is based on the circa 1900 original sashes and a vast improvement on the circa 1996 mock sashes they will replace. The kitchen window is wider than the others so the aspect ratio is a bit odd. It is weird to have a window in the kitchen again.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Wow what a fabulous improvement. Looks superb 8)

 

[malcolm]

It's easy to forget what you've done (in my case mostly only reversing what other people had done over the last 40 years). The window was only a little bit but I'm quite excited because it is new.

Next on the list is to demolish anything built under 30 years ago to open up the rear aspect, and maybe fix the crooked arch.

 

[plasticpigeon]

A great success, that looks superb.

 

[TheRoost]

Proportions of the opening look 'right' now, very good. I think it was quite common back then to have an upstairs window narrower than the one below, but they managed to do it in a way that looked proportional.

What happened with the crooked arch? Does it look like it has moved a long time ago?

 

[mims&pip]

Great improvement, Malcolm

 

[malcolm]

I didn't realise the arch was so crooked. It's only because we put something straight there that it looks odd.

That corner of the house has dropped about 3 inches. The Georgians built a two storey structure on the lack of foundations of what was probably a circa 1700 lean to. It's all built in lime so not too much bother apart from some odd ceiling angles.

 

[malcolm]

Update: Less than 2 years later I've had a go at the bathroom window above the kitchen. It now has a stone sill and a brick arch matching the other windows along the wall, and all the sash windows around the house will match once they are fitted properly in a week or two (that's a top sash resting in the upstairs opening). It surprises me how much difference little details like that make when compared to the photos above, though probably a bit naughty as I'm not sure the original window ever had a stone sill, and certainly no brick arch.

The stone sills look disappointingly grey like concrete sills when they are first cut, but the kitchen sill is already ageing gracefully and getting some colour back. The concrete sills next door have aged poorly and have gone blotchy.

I've got a plan now for area to the left of the windows - demolish the flat roof infill all the way back to the nice brick wall with an original external door about 7m away and create a nice courtyard that lets light into the back of the house. To the right the shed makes a good utility room but needs to be rebuilt and it might be nice aesthetically to increase the eaves height and roof line

What I really should be doing is installing a kitchen behind the kitchen window!