Reveals and window returns

New windows almost always arrive with the same sentence attached: making good is not included. So the house is left with broken plaster around every opening, expanding foam squeezing out of the gaps, old sills that no longer line up and a strip of bare block where the frame sits. That is the work we do, and it is the part that decides whether the new windows look like a proper job or like something half finished. The reveal is not only cosmetic. It is the narrowest part of the wall, so it is where the insulation is thinnest and where a cold bridge forms. That is why the corner beside a window is the first place in an Irish house to go black with mould, and it happens most often after new airtight windows go in and the room stops leaking air. Doing it properly means trimming the foam back, sealing around the frame, and finishing the reveal in an insulated backing board rather than plain sand and cement, so the surface temperature at the corner stays above the point where condensation forms. Thirty millimetres of insulated board on a reveal costs very little and stops a problem that no amount of wiping ever fixes. After that it is straightforward craft. Angle beads set plumb so the reveal reads straight from across the room, a square arris at the corner, the head of the opening level, internal sills fitted and sealed, and external returns rendered and brought back to the existing finish. The last detail is the silicone: one continuous line, tooled, in a colour that suits the frame, because a wobbly bead of white silicone undoes an otherwise good job every time.

Timing it around the window fitters

We come in after the windows are in and the foam has cured, usually a day or two later, and we like to know the install dates in advance so the two jobs do not sit waiting on each other for a fortnight. If the windows are going into a house you are living in, we work room by room so you are not left with every opening open at once, and we keep the dust in the room it belongs to.