Stone Window Sills and Cladding in Nairobi

Small pieces, and the place matching goes wrong

Sills, stair cladding and stone skirting are usually ordered after the tops, often months later, and that is exactly why they so often fail to match.

Natural stone varies between blocks and between batches. A granite ordered as the same name from the same supplier a season later can be visibly different in colour and in the pattern of the veining. Nobody notices on a sample and everybody notices on a stair.

The fix is simple and has to happen early: cut the sills and cladding from the same slab or the same batch as the tops, and store them until the building is ready. We will hold them.

Sills need a drip, and most Nairobi sills do not have one

An external sill sheds water away from the wall only if it projects and has a groove cut on the underside. Without that groove the water runs back under the sill and into the wall face, and after a couple of long rains you get staining below every window and eventually damp inside.

It costs almost nothing at fabrication and cannot be added afterwards without removing the sill.

Stair cladding

Stone on a staircase is a wear surface and an edge. Two things matter more than the material choice: the nosing detail, because that edge takes every footfall and is where chipping starts, and the finish, because a polished stone stair is genuinely slippery when wet and a honed or leathered finish is not.

On an open-tread or floating stair, the thickness and the fixing are structural questions and we ask to see the stair detail before quoting rather than measuring the treads and hoping.