Windows

[Note to French and English readers: “Interesting” means different things in the two languages. In French interesting/intéressante means attractive, something you’d like to do; in English interesting means something questionable, challenging or not quite right].

So this is an interesting (English meaning) subject for a blog entry …… as most of my focus and effort in the last eight days has been finishing the windows. When we decided to replace all the windows in the house we found a good supplier of solid wood frames in a bois exotique called Movingui. I’ve never heard of Movingui before but it’s much cheaper than oak and we saw a sample and specified it unfinished with a protective basecoat (Barbara is very definite that she doesn’t want anything that needs painting). The solid oak front door and barn door that we had built by Jonathon Elwell in the UK were beautifully finished when we received them in Sikkens light oak so over Christmas I bought 5 litres of basecoat and 5 litres of UV protector coat at a truly eye-watering price to try to match up the shades and make the movingui look like oak.

French windows are built differently to British ones; likes doors they are fitted with lift-off hinges which makes cleaning, maintenance and finishing really easy and so almost all the work can be done from the inside without ladders. I’ve finished two complete sets with four coats, the first coat made the wood come up an alarming shade of orange but now I’m part way through the third set and the finished colour looks remarkably like ….. light oak :o) The windows are out from my bedroom tonight so that could be a bit chilly.