Well, by evening, we have our new doors in place. These were made by Andrew Jaynes Joinery in Canterbury. They are CNC precision engineered items made from ACCOYA particularly special having a full height curved section that fits the opening perfectly.
We would certainly recommend Andrew Jaynes to anybody. They specialize in ACCOYA because it's stable, rot-proof and easy to machine. TRADA guarantees the material for 75 years. For windows and doors that means a perfect fit every time no matter what the weather. It needs no treatment and yet takes paint very well indeed when required. The paint is far less stressed because the stability means the paint is not stretched and shrunk as it would be on a material like oak which changes dimensionally throughout the seasons.
Here you can see the three new windows in the north face. We worked with Robin Uff the (now retired) conservation officer on the design of these windows. We have a very traditional horizontal sliding sash design that was very common in Bedfordshire. These are often referred to as "Yorkshire sliding sash windows".
The corner window was installed by expert fitters from Andrew Jaynes who manufactured the windows. It achieves exactly what we wanted of it - the timber structure of the mill inside is clearly visible from the outside. This is a particular favourite of our recently retired conservation officer, Robin Uff.
We were originally going to use a larch or oak weatherboarding that would have been painted with a proven long-lasting exterior paint. Then we discovered Accoya. The ultimately superior properties of Accoya result from a process called Acetylation.
Accoya is a wood that is almost inert, immune to bugs and even immersion in water. It's TRADA guaranteed for 75 years. The colour was an unexpected bonus since it is so close in colour to the paint that was originally on the mill. It will pale and 'silver' with age but won't need any maintenance for many years.
Accoya also works beautifully for making the windows. It is stable enough that we can make the glazing bars that are just as thin as the existing windows even though they are holding double-glazed panels. So we get low maintenance low energy windows that don't need to be painted, will match and age at the same rate as the weatherboarding and will still open and close smoothly after 10 years of being battered by rain and condensation.