Drive through Russell Lea and the housing barely changes. Interwar bungalows on regular blocks, most of them from the 1920s and 1930s, with wide front windows that were never designed with a roller shutter in mind. Nearly every unit here is a retrofit.
We cover Russell Lea in the 2046 postcode, along the Lyons Road side and the streets running down toward Iron Cove, and out to Five Dock, Rodd Point, Drummoyne and Abbotsford.
Retrofitting a shutter into a ninety-year-old opening is where most of the faults here begin. The opening has moved, the brickwork is soft, and the unit was sized to a measurement rather than to the reveal as it actually is.
The measurement that matters on a ninety-year-old house is the real reveal, not the nominal window size, and the two are rarely the same by the time a bungalow has settled. We measure at several points across the opening and pack the guides to suit rather than forcing a standard unit into a space that has moved. It takes more care on the day, and it saves a shutter that would otherwise wear itself out on one side over the next few years. A properly packed retrofit will still be running straight in ten years, which a forced one will not.
