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I recently repainted my room yellow, don't forgetting the internal windowsill. Here are some pictures:

window opened window closed close up

As you can see in the third picture, the windowsill is all but flat (my house is very old).

Since the painting used is the same used for the walls it's not a "heavy duty" painting, not something that would last long on the floor for example. I would like to protect the windowsill somehow in order to avoid the painting to "come off".

I've thought of two main possibilities:

  • protective transparent painting
  • a protective, "second" windowsill made out of plexiglass/polycarbonate/whatever

The latter option is what I'd like more, the problem needed to be solved being mainly how to adapt the flat plexiglass to the uneven surface (some sort of adjustable feet maybe?).

Measures are 103x13cm, maximum allowable height of this protection is 5cm (if I want to still be able to open and close the window).

My question then is:
Have you got any suggestions for one or both the options I gave? Do you have a better idea?

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  • What do you want to protect from? Wear, UV radiation, moisture, stains, impact? Do you just want to protect the paint/color or do you want to protect the wood underneath?
    – Arluin
    Aug 11, 2014 at 17:17
  • @Arluin The underneath is some sort of cotto tile. I want to protect it (the pain) from wear/impact, moisture should not be an issue since the radiator is just underneath. Aug 11, 2014 at 17:32

2 Answers 2

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I generally use a clear-coat Varnish finish on my outdoor painting projects to reduce wear damage and to extend the life of the paint. You can get this as a spray or a paint. This is the easiest and cheapest solution but provides only moderate protection.

For superior protection:

You could attach a piece of plexiglass or tempered glass with adhesive or standoff mountings. I'm not sure if the adhesive would be visible between the glass and the voids in the surface. Using an attractive glass with standoff mountings would provide a very clean and modern look. A quick google search for glass standoffs shows that you can get them as short as .5in/1.25cm.

A final thought would be to make a mold around the windowsill and pour in an acrylic resin. This would fill in the voids in the surface and provide a very sturdy glass-like finish.

Here is a link to pouring acrylic on a table. You can adapt the instructions for your windowsill.

Note that using an adhesive or acrylic resin is more a less a PERMANENT installation. It will be very hard to remove either. The varnish or glass+standoffs is considerably easier to remove later if you want to repaint or change the look.

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  • The acrylic pouring is a neat idea, +1! It just can't be undone easily I guess Aug 11, 2014 at 17:57
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    I had the same thought and added that to my answer apparently while you were commenting.
    – Arluin
    Aug 11, 2014 at 18:01
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The best way to protect the interior windowsill is with a good solid screen window.

Sills will tend to take a beating even if they are protected, just the nature of the component. They take a lot of sun, a lot of temperature change and will have moisture on them from time to time. They will need to be worked on more often than the rest of the window.

From your pictures I like the way it looks as is, it seems to fit the motif. Painting the sill does not take particularly long when it needs to be redone (so long as you don't let it go too long. Your standard interior paint is what would generally be recommended to paint it so I would leave it as is.

Though i admit the idea of using resin is interesting.

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