Wooden window frames and shutters in Nairobi

Timber windows lost the new-build market in Nairobi to aluminium and uPVC, for reasonable enough reasons: they need maintenance and the alternatives do not. What that leaves is a smaller and more interesting market, which is the older houses where the original frames are part of the architecture and replacing them with aluminium visibly cheapens the building.

window frames measures 210 searches a month here at an advertising competition index of 10, which is one of the softest figures on this site.

Repair before replacement

On a house in Muthaiga, Karen or old Lavington, the original frames are usually in better condition than they look. Paint fails long before timber does, and a frame that looks finished is often sound except at the bottom of the jambs and along the sill, which is precisely where water sits.

The repair is to splice new timber into the failed sections rather than replace the frame. That is carpentry: cutting back to sound material, matching the section, and making a joint that will not open. It keeps the original window and it costs a fraction of replacement.

We could not find a reliable published Kenyan rate for window frame or shutter work, either supplied or installed, so this page carries no figures rather than invented ones. It is quoted after measuring.

What we make

• Casement frames and sashes in hardwood, to match an existing opening and existing sightlines. Matching the section matters: a new sash with a chunkier profile than its neighbours is immediately obvious across an elevation.
• Sills, internal and external. The external sill is the hardest-working piece of timber in a window and the first to go.
• Louvre and panel shutters, internal or external. External shutters in Nairobi are as much about sun and security as about looks, and the hardware matters more than the joinery.
• Burglar bars in timber-framed openings, where the fixing has to go into sound material rather than into the frame’s weakest point.
• Repairs and re-glazing of existing frames.

The two things that kill a timber window

Standing water on the sill. A sill needs a fall away from the glass and a drip groove underneath so water cannot track back to the wall. Many original sills have both and have been painted so many times that the drip groove has filled solid, at which point water runs back into the joint. Raking that groove out is a small job with a large effect.

Unsealed end grain. Timber absorbs water through cut ends many times faster than through its faces. A frame whose joints were sealed and whose bottom rail end grain was not will rot from the inside of the joint outwards, invisibly, which is why a window can look perfect and then fail suddenly.

Honest about maintenance

A timber window needs looking at. Every few years, more often on a west elevation taking afternoon sun and driving rain. Anyone telling you a painted timber window in Nairobi is maintenance-free is selling.

What you get in exchange is a window that can be repaired indefinitely rather than replaced as a unit, and a building that looks like itself.