External Sills

[Oli HG]

Hello All,

Appreciate there’s a similar and recent thread to this by Tom but I didn’t want to piggyback on that - I also have a Victorian terrace and my outside sills are not in great shape. There’s damp in the living room which may or may not be connected to the state of the bay window sill (see below).

I’d really like to have a crack at this myself but have very little experience so any advice is appreciated.

Here is the whole sill, front bay:

And here are a couple of close-ups:

As you can see there is mould growing over (what looks to me like) painted render, which is just a couple of mm thick.

What I was planning to do is chisel off the painted render and check for cracks underneath; fill those if they need filling, then re-render with lime cement and paint.

A few questions though...

- Does that plan sound basically right?

- If so, what mix should I use for any cracks and for the render?

- What is this sill likely to be actually made of, under the render? If it's cement over bricks and the cement turns out to be cracked, should I get rid of that too?

Cheers,

Oli

 

[KenGMac]

Oli, good evening.

Can I suggest you take things one step at a time?

Suggest you firstly clean the mould from the sill, use either a proprietary patio mould cleaner, that way you have a better idea of what you are facing? cracks in the old surface applied [deteriorating] finish.

Take a "Paint Scraper"to areas of the top [paint??] finish at this stage you should be able to find out what the sill is made of? Looking at some of the images posted, a lot, but by no means all of the old applied finish should come away.

If it were me I would avoid using a hammer and chisel [at this stage] because if the sill is stone, any and all gouges will be visible for ever more

Can I suggest once you have determined what the sill is made from you get back to the board for more advice?

Ken

 

[Oli HG]

Ken, thanks for the reply - that makes sense to me. I’ll get the mould off and come back with some photos. Might wait till it stops raining, if it ever does...