I noticed recently when decorating an upstairs bedroom, that the area above the window sounded hollow when tapped. Sure enough, when I came to drill holes for the curtain pole brackets, I started drilling only to find wood beneath the plaster.
My current house was built in 1972 and is a fairly standard 70s-style brick-built house - the house I had previously, which was built in 1977, had concrete lintels which were extremely difficult to drill, so this was not what I was expecting !
Is it possible that this house has steel lintels that need to be boarded somehow with pasterboard internally ? Or is it possible to get wooden lintels ? (these presumably wouldn't sound hollow though !)
When I bought the house, the survey (the intermediate one) stated that there was no evidence of lintels but I got the impression that they probably only had a quick look and were covering themselves against the possibility that there might not be any, rather than the fact that they'd done any detailed studies on the matter.
I was able to fix the curtain pole brackets by screwing into the wood and these held securely enough so I've not got a problem there - I'm just curious to know how my house is built and whether I might run into problems when i get my windows replaced (currently a mixture of single and double-glazed wooden units). A friend of mine who lives in a similar house on the same estate had his windows replaced a while ago and doesn't remember the fitters having any problems.
Any comments appreciated.
My current house was built in 1972 and is a fairly standard 70s-style brick-built house - the house I had previously, which was built in 1977, had concrete lintels which were extremely difficult to drill, so this was not what I was expecting !
Is it possible that this house has steel lintels that need to be boarded somehow with pasterboard internally ? Or is it possible to get wooden lintels ? (these presumably wouldn't sound hollow though !)
When I bought the house, the survey (the intermediate one) stated that there was no evidence of lintels but I got the impression that they probably only had a quick look and were covering themselves against the possibility that there might not be any, rather than the fact that they'd done any detailed studies on the matter.
I was able to fix the curtain pole brackets by screwing into the wood and these held securely enough so I've not got a problem there - I'm just curious to know how my house is built and whether I might run into problems when i get my windows replaced (currently a mixture of single and double-glazed wooden units). A friend of mine who lives in a similar house on the same estate had his windows replaced a while ago and doesn't remember the fitters having any problems.
Any comments appreciated.
