Cedar for internal window cill?

[Jimbouk]

Apparently all our windows and doors have been fitted today... off to see them at dawn tomorrow!

 

Time to choose internal windows cills, the whole house is clad in cedar, so was wondering about using some for the cills too. Nice piece of continuity, or is it a no-no? Would give it a couple of coats of osmo oil to protect.

[Russell griffiths]

Cedar would work well but it would be a completely different kettle of fish to your external variety,it would need to have a different moisture content as bringing your external cladding type timber indoors would make it do all weird and wonderful things. 

[Jeremy Harris]

Our internal cills were deep, around 290mm, and I bought some laminated Radiata Pine (knot free) worktops, around 30mm thick, and 600mm wide, then ripped them down to get two 290mm finished width boards from each.  Radiata Pine is easily finished with oil or varnish, I used satin varnish.  It's fairly tough and doesn't absorb varnish or suffer from raised grain after the first coat, so you get a very good finish with three coats, just de-nibbed with a Scotchbrite pad between coats.  You can't see the laminated joints at all, either, as it's very straight grained.

[craig]

We've supplied internal window cills/reveals and trims in the same timber/finish as the windows on a few occasions. Have you considered asking the window supplier if they could make them to match?

[Crofter]

Just bumping this one as I'm now in need of my internal cills.

I had in my head that I would get a piece of oak worktop and cut it down (I need three cills- 1.8m and two at 0.9m) but having had a wee look I realise that oak kitchen worktops appear to be very obviously made up of blocks of wood glued or finger jointed together. As I want to oil or varnish these I don't think it's the look I want.

I could take the easy option and use the same stuff as my exposed beams- dressed all round redwood from the BM. I get to choose the exact bits of wood from stock, and there's a wide choice of sizes. It would obviously match the beams, although not the windowframes, which are a darker and cleaner lacquered pine. The pieces I've used for the beams were stored dry but exposed to the wind, and were subject to a fair degree of shrinking/cracking- more than would be acceptable for a windowsill.

@JSHarris's radiata pine sounds interesting.Any others to consider?

[Jeremy Harris]

This was the supplier I used for the panels I cut down for the window cills: http://www.mlpanels.com/softwood-panels/radiata-knotless-pine/

 

I ripped down three of their 600mm wide, 2m long, 30mm thick boards to make our cills, mainly because the thickness of our walls meant I needed cills that were around 295mm deep.