We did it. We finally made a decision on the windows. 15 months, 15 window companies, and 1500 hours of research later and we made a decision.
Here's what most of our windows look like now, plus several cracked panes of glass and glazing literally falling from the outside of the windows.
(cleaning decades of mold off the windows with a toothbrush and bleach)
And in 3-4 weeks we're going to have Jeld-Wen premium wood windows delivered and installed by an independent window installer.
At the end of the day going independent enabled us to save thousands on this super expensive investment. Jeld-Wen also happened to be the only company that offered every single one of the options I wanted. Everyone else had one or two minor details that just didn't work. I put 150 paint chips on a wall a couple weeks ago, details matter.
I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little sad we won't be restoring the old windows. It's almost a badge of honor on old-home blogs to restore old windows, and it's certainly less impact on the environment to spare the landfills the extra waste. Several quotes to re-glaze and repaint only the exteriors was going to cost more than some of our most expensive wood replacement quotes, and more than twice as much as the lowest vinyl quote. Plus, we'd still have the expense of buying screens for the windows since we literally can't open more than half of the windows in the house because of their massive storm windows.
I read for hours and hours about restoring windows, and last summer I thought re-glazing would be my weekend project this summer, but we've got other plans in mind that just don't jive with spending the summer sweating it out on a ladder while scraping and sanding what may very well be 80 years of lead paint. And forget about trying to remove the sashes from the inside; we'd have to destroy most of the trim just to get at them. I imagine that I will literally cry when they take away our old windows, but I'm sure that I'll get over it when we're able to shut the a/c off, open the windows and enjoy the end of the hellacious D.C. summer a little bit earlier this year.
Despite my angst over disposing of the old windows, we are excited about the new windows. We're a little shell-shocked by how much money we just spent. This could be our most expensive outright purchase yet, but we are fully confident that we researched this purchase to death. 15 hundred hours? I meant 15 thousand. We're not ones to count our chickens before they're hatched, but once these beautiful ladies are in and looking glorious we'll share the slightly unconventional details of how we made our decision and how we saved many thousands of dollars on this latest project.Labels: inside, outside, windows
