How to Repair a Broken Rolling Window Shutter.

If you live in a house or flat with rolling shutters then you’re probably familiar with the problem of a fallen shutter that you can’t raise.

There are 2 common causes:

1. The webbing strap which raises the blind has worn and broken.
2. The blind has separated from the drum which it rolls around.

Today we are dealing with the second of these 2 causes.

This type of failure is common in old shutters.

The plastic becomes brittle with age and prone to breaking.

Here we can see that the top lamina has broken at the point of attachment to the drum.The shutter then fell shut.

This is how we go about repairing the broken shutter:

1. Drill out the pop rivets and open the exterior plastic flap. This allows you to get access to the roller mechanism/ drum.

2. Wind the drum into the “down” position. If you forget to do this you will not be able to wind the shutter back up once repaired.

3. Remove the webbing straps which connect the blind to the roller drum ( self-tapping metal screw)

4. Carefully raise the shutter in the guides until the broken lamina is free to be disconnected from the second lamina. The plastic laminas slot together and can be easily slid apart.

5. Take the broken lamina to your local hardware shop and buy a replacement cut to the same size. (In this case we didn’t buy a replacement lamina since the remaining laminas were enough to allow the shutter to close properly. When the next lamina down breaks we’ll buy 2 replacements! Sometimes when the roller blind slams shut other brittle laminas also break and need to be replaced. This is easy to do since the laminas simply slide together.)

6. The replacement lamina slides into place.

7. Slide the 2 attachment straps onto the top lamina.

8. Screw the attachment straps to the drum and wind the roller shutter up and down to make sure that everything works correctly.


9. Close the plastic flap and secure it in place either with Pop Rivets (as original) or if you don’t have a rivet gun you may prefer to use self-tapping screws (as we have here).

10. Job done!

How To Replace a Broken Sash Cord

Antique sash windows look great but they often need a bit of TLC. If you live in a rented Victorian house with sash windows it’s pretty common to find that the windows don’t move properly and if they do move they either move awkwardly or just won’t stay up once open. Both these symptoms are due to broken sash cords.

What are sash cords exactly ? Sash windows slide up and down in their frames and should stay in which ever position you choose -  seemingly by magic. Actually there’s no magic involved, each part of the window has a cord attached to each side of its frame which runs up and over a pulley and is connected to a cast iron counter weight. That’s 4 in total for a typical window.

On this window, in my friend’s flat in Brighton UK, one of the sash cords for the lower panel has broken. This is how we fix it.

Sash Window Repair Step 1

First we remove the decorative strip which holds the lower window panel in place. We use a hammer and chisel to do this. The trim strip splits as we remove it, which is pretty normal, so we will replace it with new wood.

Sash Window Repair Step 2

We can now disconnect the panel from its weights and lift it out of the window frame. Obviously in this case since one cord is already broken we only need to disconnect the other one.

Sash Window Repair Step 3

Next we disconnect the cord from the lower panel and lower the iron counterweight down inside the window frame.  Then we prize out the 2 pieces of wood which cover the space containing the weights  (one either side) see photo.

Sash Window Repair Step 4

Now we carefully lift out the counterweight and detach the broken cord.  We thread the new replacement cord through the pulley and tie it to the cast iron counterweight which we place back in the window frame.

Sash Window Repair Step 5

If, like me, you damaged the trim strips when you removed them now’s the time to cut new ones to fit.

Sash Window Repair 6

Replace the Wooden panels which cover the space where the counterweights are.

Sash Window Repair Step 7

Next we replace the window panel in the frame, attach the sash cords each side of the panel and replace the decorative strips. Remember to make sure you knock the nails in so that they are below the surface of the wood. You then fill the small hole with polyfilla, by doing this you ensure that the nail head won’t rust and stain the paintwork later (see handy hints post)

Sash Window repair step 8

The final step is to that the window slides up and down in the frame correctly.  Luckily all is well so we now proceed to make good and prime the window frame ready for redecorating.