Most windows written off as beyond repair can be saved
We splice the original timber and keep the original glass. Nineteen years of it, across Bath, Bristol and north Somerset.
Splicing, not replacing
Most firms offering to restore your sash windows will build a new sash and fit it into the old frame. The frame survives. Everything else goes in a skip — the timber the house was built with, and the glass that has been in it since before anyone alive can remember.
Splicing is the older method, and the slower one. We cut out only the section that has failed, let in new timber, and leave every sound component where it is. When we hand the window back, the ripple you can see in the glass is the one that was there before we started.
This is the whole difference, and it is the reason a conservation officer will accept one approach and refuse the other.
Four ways in, depending on what the house needs
Every price below is a starting figure from real jobs. We quote per window after a survey, so you can stage the work rather than take it all at once.
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Full sash restoration
The window comes out, gets stripped, spliced, re-corded, re-weighted and draught-sealed, then goes back. Original glass retained wherever it survives.
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Whole-house programmes
Every window in the property, sequenced room by room so the house stays liveable and secure while the work runs. One standard across the whole elevation.
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Draught-proofing and rebalancing
For windows that are sound but rattle, stick or leak heat. Brush seals routed into the sash itself, weights rebalanced, nothing visible changed.
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Condition survey and report
A written report on every window with photographs: what can be saved, what cannot, and why. Accepted by conservation officers as supporting evidence.
What happens, and when
The house is never left open, and you will know the timings before anything comes out of a frame.
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Survey
We come out, open things up, and tell you honestly what is salvageable. Sometimes the answer is that replacement is right. We will say so.
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Written quote
Itemised per window, so you can see exactly what each one costs and decide what to do first.
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Workshop
Sashes come to Locksbrook in batches. Temporary secure boarding goes in the moment one leaves the house.
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Reinstatement
Rehung, rebalanced, sealed and adjusted on site. We do not leave until every window runs properly under its own weight.
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Aftercare
We come back at twelve months and re-adjust anything that has settled. Included, not an extra.
They talked us out of replacing four windows we had written off. Two years on you cannot tell which ones were repaired.Helen R. · Bath
Find out what your windows actually need
A survey takes about an hour and a half. You get a written answer either way, including when replacement is genuinely the right call.
The questions people actually ask
Per window, often not. Over the life of the house, yes — and by a wide margin. A spliced sash can be repaired again in forty years by anyone with the skill. A replacement unit cannot be repaired at all; when it fails you buy another one. We quote per window so you can put the two figures side by side yourself rather than take our word for it.
Because we show you the joint. Every restoration is photographed at the splice, and the condition report names which components are original and which were let in. If a firm cannot show you that, they are replacing.
The splice work carries a ten year guarantee. In practice a properly maintained spliced sash outlives the person who commissioned it — that is why we are still working on windows fitted three hundred years ago.
No. Brush seals are routed into the sash itself rather than stuck to the frame, so the rattling and the draught stop without any visible change to the window. This is the single most noticeable difference for most people.
We are usually about five months out, and we would rather tell you now than at the survey. If the windows are sound but cold, draught-proofing and rebalancing is a shorter and much cheaper piece of work that will hold the house through a winter while a full restoration is scheduled.
It usually makes restoration the only route that will get consent, which is why architects send people to us. We provide the written condition report as supporting evidence. Consent itself is decided by your local authority on the merits of your application, and nobody can promise you an outcome.
Three questions about the house
They let us tell you whether we are the right firm before either of us spends a morning on it. We reply within one working day.
Workshop visits by arrangement