Question for builders: what is actually above bungalow windows

Annemos

Thank you all everso much for your help. 

I shall have to hope for the best I think and hope he knows what he is doing next week.

And that it can indeed be firmly attached. 

Annemos

stuart45 ..... that is a very useful video. Thanks very much. 

grumbler

stuart45 said:

They still might have stuck in a steel beam rather than a catnic.

It can be seen through the mesh on the photo - and it's grey. Either galvanised steel (catnic) or concrete.

greenface2

probably nothing above the window and that bay used to be flat so probably nothing above just a space where your roof line finishes . could you fix it into the window ?

gozaimasu

Annemos said:

This is when the ceiling was taken off to get rid of the artex.

Is it necessary these days to remove an entire ceiling to remove artex?! I thought it would be a simple plastering job...

Annemos

I am not sure what you mean about fixing it to the window. There is a set of net curtains around the bay. 


Yes that is what I was worried about...... a large space in the middle! 

The annoying thing is I have purchased the two sets of curtains for the living room and they are expensive new John Lewis ones.

The other window and pole is fine on the other wall, because it goes into the cavity wall and that is firm enough and also there is  less weight of curtain, as it is a smaller window. 


I am starting to think I may need to come up with a cosmetic solution for matching on that front wall...... all I can come up with is this.....

Have made just two 60 cm wide strips of the pencil pleated curtains and put one at each end of the pole and they will be purely for decorative use. They will never be drawn across and it will look as if the curtain is always open, if you see what I mean.

It is a sort of decorative edge! 

This will be much lighter and there will not be the drawing of curtains movement into the unstable middle, so hopefully we can get just enough strength with the central fitting to hold that up and it will stay in place.


You can perhaps see that I have a white curtain track just above the bay window. I use that for very lightweight curtains that I made and I draw them to keep the sun off the furniture in the mornings. (Very light cotton fabric.) I may have to use that as the infill. 

It givse me the privacy, but it will not give me the warmth that the proper curtains would give in the winter. But there may be no way around that. 


I have a dining room that is the same width as the living room one and that wall feels very firm when I knock it, so the redundant curtain would have to be tried in there instead! 


What a complete and utter pfaff! 

Annemos

This was an insurance job for subsidence with a lot of other repair work. So I presume they had to get rid of all the artex rather than plastering over it, so the contractors would not be exposed??

koalakoala

Why don’t you stick up a big of wood with one of those super stick glues like no nails, then screw the rail to the wood?

Annemos

I have also read that somewhere koalakoala. Does it actually hold though on top of the plasterboard?

I have visions of attaching the wooden pole and then it pulls the whole lot down, pole, wooden strip, and great lumps of plasterboard!!

stuart45

grumbler said:

stuart45 said:

They still might have stuck in a steel beam rather than a catnic.

It can be seen through the mesh on the photo - and it's grey. Either galvanised steel (catnic) or concrete.

It looks like it doesn't cross the cavity, so it's not a cavity lintel.