Decorators & windows: are we being mucked about?

dgerrard

Hi all,

We had our kitchen painted recently.  I'm happy with the job in most respects, they filled some holes in the ceiling, did a good job on the walls, etc.

Only thing that bothers me, is the window.  They were painting when we were out and left before we got back so we didn't check the job when they were here.

I was surprised to see the state of the window & frame.  To be fair, it already looked like this prior to the painting, with the crack & the old paint around the edge.  We sent them the below & asked about it:  they said this would require some sort of special filler, and that painting/removing paint from the window frame itself wouldn't have been covered as it's not part of the wall.  They said if we wanted they could come back and fill the crack with just normal caulk, but that it would likely just crack again & we'd need a window expert to come in and do it special.

Maybe I'm just giving them too much credit, but if they could fill a hole in a ceiling I'm surprised they didn't cover this as well as part of painting the kitchen, especially as it was quite pricy (£800 for a small kitchen).

Thoughts?

Doozergirl

Those window frames need a serious deep clean before you start trying to recaulk them.  

But there's no reason why a decorator shouldn't be caulking.  The existing needs scraping off and it needs reapplying totally. If you just rub over it in a bit of a bodge I would expect the crack to reopen.  

If someone caulks properly from scratch and it does reopen afterwards then perhaps silicon would be a stronger option, but I think caulking it should be fine.  

FreeBear

Or take that piggin' ugly square trim off, patch the reveal with a suitable filler. Fill any gap between the actual frame and wall, then fit a more visually appealing bit of trim.

Downside to removing the current trim is may well leave a mark on the frame that is difficult to remove..

SaverRate

Probably the easiest solution would be clean the frame up as much as possible. Fit cloaking strips around the window (wickes sell different widths). This will cover the crack and then silicone between the cloaking strip and wall and cloaking strip and existing window trim. This should cover most of the old paint on the window.

No I wouldn't expect a decorator to clean the existing paint off the window but probably caulk the crack. 

I had a window similar when I moved in although the overpaint wasnt as bad and fitted a cloaking strip and silicone and it 'hid' most of the over paint. 

EssexExile

In the OP you quoted them as saying "...and that painting/removing paint from the window frame itself wouldn't have been covered as it's not part of the wall". If they were only there to paint the wall, then that is what they have done. As others have said, sorting out the window would be quite a bit more work. I'm surprised they didn't mention it though while they were there.

dgerrard

Thank you all!

Had a feeling this would be the case, sounds like it is a specialist job.  In hindsight wish they'd mentioned just so I could have arranged that separately, but as I didn't mention to them I can't expect them to mindread.

Oh well, will get on either doing myself or bringing someone in.  Thank you all!

travis-powers

I used a strong solution of sugar soap on my upvc windows came up like new