How can I replace the rubber strips around the window frame?

Hi,

We've been decorating the (soon to be) kids bedroom and have noticed the rubber strips down the left and right of the window frame edge (where the frame meets the wall) are coming away. They have some mould underneath too.

I'm assuming these are to block gaps and draughts, but can we tear them out and replace them with filler (multipurpose polyfilla or something similar?). It looks like they come out pretty easily.

If your talking about the silicone seal then yes i guess you could pull it off and seeing as your decorating you could use decoraters caulk, like silicone but water based and paintable, silicone isn't.

Fill the gaps with caulk, removes excess with a flat filling knife then carefully remove any remainder from the window with a damp sponge, depending how tidy it looked after the filling knife, leave to dry and paint or paper over

Thanks. I assume it's the same thing. I'll have a look for the caulk in one of the local DIY shops.

Cheers for the help.

While I think of it, looking at the other windows in the house, some seem to have this same softer silicone strip and others seem to have a smaller harder substance joining the uPVC window to the wall (where I guess a gap would have been).

What different substances are normally used and would there be a logical reason for the same builders doing something different on different windows? (larger gaps perhaps?)

This is the bedroom one, with the offending strip that keeps coming up nearest to the frame.
[/img]

pbyron said:

Thanks. I assume it's the same thing. I'll have a look for the caulk in one of the local DIY shops.

Cheers for the help.

Click to expand...

Yes it ll be called either decorators caulk or acrylic.

Generally silicone is used to seal pvc to pvc, caulk should be used internally to seal pvc to plaster, as its water based its an indoor sealant but i have known it to be used outdoors, as for the mix of silicone and caulk then i would guess and thats all i can do is that for the larger gaps he used caulk and for the smaller gaps (where the window was tighter against the plaster) he used silicone which if your going to paper over is fine, if your going to emulsion then use caulk