Window shopping

On Friday we trekked up to the window place to look at their wares. There were a few issues relating to the windows themselves. They are supplied with built-in vents which strikes us as a potential source of noise. There's appropriate venting in most of the rooms already, and in those without we'd prefer to pick where it goes rather than it being stuck to the windows. Thankfully they can be supplied without.

The ironmongery was a bigger problem: the handles are supplied coated in a matt grey plastic, which the supplier describes as "chrome" against all reason. The only alternative is brass, to which we both have an aversion. So on Tuesday Dara went to an ironmonger and found that we are not the first to have a problem with the handles from this particular windowmaker, and they have a line specifically designed to fit their windows. Replacement handles will likely cost a grand or so. We may compromise on the internal doors to save money for this.

The front door from this window company proved to be an even bigger problem. It seems that doors which don't have a handle on the outside are something of a rarity these days, and Dara won't have anything else. The side-lights and top-light were also a problem as these have their own independent frames instead of sharing a frame with the door. This legolike approach, leaving a double-thick frame around the door, would be a particular problem for the top-light where it would wind up taking as much space as the glass itself.

It looks like the least-nuclear option is to drop the front door from the order and get one elsewhere. There was another quote from a different supplier provided to the engineer in response to our tender. An alternative might be to go with that, though we haven't been able to get the document from the engineer yet. It's quite possible that they'll be just as unsatisfactory.

The builder wanted to order the windows yesterday. Funnily enough, that didn't happen.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday the tiles and bathroom suite were delivered and, what with the floors from last week, our front hall is increasingly coming to resemble a builder's yard:



Building work resumes on Monday with the next phase of foundations.