Hi everyone I'm trying to drill some holes above a wide window in a 1960s/1970s ex-council house to fix some brackets (top fixing) for some blinds in the kitchen. We thought about putting a timber batten above the window on the inside wall, but the plaster and paint for the whole room is really uneven, so we're just trying to get some blinds up that will last until we redo the whole room. The inner reveal was tiled by the previous owner, and I've managed to drill through the tile (extra slowly with a masonry bit on a cordless drill) and about 1cm further before hitting something extra hard, which I guess is a concrete or steel lintel. The top of the window from the outside is covered by flashing, so I can't see whether the lintel is concrete from there. I've also tried masonry and HSS bits and tried to work out what material I've hit based on the colour / texture of the debris from drilling. So far, I'm getting mostly grey or yellow powder but I'm probably just blunting my drill bits now... I've also used a multidetector across the whole lintel area, and a few parts are flashing up as metal, but not the whole lintel area. Does anyone have any ideas on how to work out what the lintel's made of please?
@CGN @Rulland Thanks for this - got myself an SDS drill and it worked perfectly (and based on all the debris, definitely concrete)! Cheers