Slowly, slowly

Last night we watched the first episode of BBC's new Sunday night drama Bodyguard. During the first 20 minutes our hero responds stage by stage to a security incident as it develops, making it up as he goes along, in the light of his experience and intuition. That's how it feels as I continue to work on our leaky window. At least, the "making-it-up-as-I-go-along" bit does. My experience is limited though growing and, as for the correctness of my intuition, we shall see.

Each stage seems to present a new challenge which it seems wise not to ignore. The fact that the pieces forming the mitres of the top corners of the window frame were not firmly fixed to each other struck me as a Bad Thing. My first attempt at fixing them was 50% successful. Today I sorted out the one where glue on its own had failed, using the technique that had worked on the other – re-tapping a worn screw hole so that the angled sections were pulled together, with some epoxy glue between them to strengthen and seal.

The good people at Oxley had had to work hard on Friday to get all the screws that secure the window frame to the hull back in place – it was the four screw holes down the right hand side of the window that were out of alignment. I suspect it was partly this that caused the problems with the frame in the first place, by pulling it out of shape and breaking the top corners. So – what to do? I decided, wisely or not only time will tell, to enlarge the holes in the frame downwards, so that the screws will go in straight.

It was only a millimetre or two, but obviously leaves a much bigger hole for water to get behind the frame. That will definitely need sealant, but I was planning in any event on finding a way to seal all the screw holes, not just the enlarged ones.

Another day has passed. This job is taking a long time. What's that about catching monkeys?