Restoring a Tri-ang DH/7 Townhouse - Part Eight

At last the balconies are back.

The second floor was the easiest. All I had to do was pop a bit of glue onto each end of the newly painted balustrades and reassemble the railings.

The first floor was trickier as I had to sort out the missing rails first.

The broken rails on the first floor balcony when the house first arrived.

A substantial part of the right-hand rail was still there so I used that as a template to create a completely new rail for that side of the house.

I drew around the existing piece of rail on some plywood of the correct depth to mark out the shape of the new rail and simply extended the long straight edge to the length of the missing piece.

Kind husband then used a jigsaw to cut out the new rail. I will attempt most woodworking jobs but I find plywood is impossible to work with and prefer someone else to make a hash of it instead. Which he didn't, I hasten to add.

Once cut, I used these handy little clamps to clamp the old and new piece together and sanded the new piece until it was nice and smooth and an exact [though longer] replica of the original.

Of course I needed holes in the rail into which the balustrades would be inserted. It was easy to get the right gauge of drill bit by inserting various sizes into the holes in the base of the balcony until the snuggest fit was found.

Kind husband and Chief Driller of Plywood had the excellent idea of lying the new rail on top of the holes in the base of the balcony and marking the the exact centre of the holes by inserting the drill bit through the underside of the balcony base. By pressing on the drill bit, the pointy tip of it indented the wood of the new rail in the exact centre of the hole.

These precise marks allowed him to drill the holes in exactly the right places, ensuring that the balustrades would be nice and straight once refitted.

For the left-hand rail, I just flipped over the rail I'd removed from the right-hand side and used it as a replacement, thought it needed a with a little extension since it wasn't quite long enough.

I cut the rail so that the extension join was above a balustrade to give it support and the photo above was taken before I'd filled, sanded and painted the join which is now pretty much invisible.

And here we have the finished front of the house with the rotting base and missing parts replaced, the paintwork reproduced, the original door unearthed and the balconies reinstated.

Oh and the original sides 'patched up' too. It's really quite a fancy house and does make me smile. 😃

The next step is replacing the glass in the windows. The glass cutter and cutting oil I ordered have arrived and I'm psyching my up for the job! I'll let you know how I get on.

Until next time,

Zoe