Best way to restore detailing around bay window

[Auric]

Hi all

I'm looking for advice on restoring our bay window. The previous occupant thought it would be great to shear off the London victorian detailing and to pebbledash the front of the house. We've got the pebbledash off ourselves but now need to restore the look of the bay window as we live in a conservation area.

I've attached images of our window and our neighbour's window. We are thinking the best way would be to create a mold of our neighbours detailing and cast a replacement for our windows.

We've been in touch with a guy who says he can create the required jesmonite 730 casts for us for £3500. We were expecting this to cost us a fair bit, but wanted to double-check that this seems a reasonable quote? All four of the stone caps are unique so it would probably be four separate molds that need to be made. The base stone probably only requires two moulds to cover the four stones.

All advice is welcome!

Cheers
Jake

 

[Tigercubrider]

I would have thought silicone for the mould, with plaster and wood for strength.
I can ask a colleague who's an artist and I know he uses Jesmonite for some stuff.

 

[Auric]

I would have thought silicone for the mould, with plaster and wood for strength.
I can ask a colleague who's an artist and I know he uses Jesmonite for some stuff.

Thanks, Tigercubrider. I think they suggested Jesmonite 730 as it's external and needs to be weatherproof, although we will end up painting the whole stonework.

 

[cdbe]

Have you considered pargeting? I don't know anything about it but when my wife lived in Essex it was everywhere - some of it extremely ornate.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

I think you need to make up your moulds then use a reconstituted stone (ground stone, generally sandstone mixed with an acrylic resin binder) to produce the pieces. I've seen the technique used on quite a few listed buildings in recent years. It can be dowelled on and worked with standard stone tops once set if necessary and it will take a fairly detailed moulding. There are also lime mortar based repair compounds like Conserv