Window Replacement

What the job actually is

The unit you choose out of a catalogue matters less than most people expect. Two identical windows, one installed carefully and one installed quickly, will not perform the same in five years — and the difference is entirely in work that gets covered by trim before you ever see it.

What separates the two:

• Square, shimmed and fastened — not pushed into the opening and held there by expanding foam. A frame carrying its load through foam will rack over time, and a racked frame is why a window that opened easily in year one sticks in year four.
• Flashed so water has somewhere to go. Water gets past exterior trim on every house eventually. The question is whether the opening is detailed to shed it back out or to hold it against the framing.

None of this is visible on the finished job, which is exactly why it is worth asking about before you hire anyone.

Adding an opening where there was not one

Cutting a new window into a finished wall is a different job from replacing one. The framing has to be opened and a header set to carry what the removed studs were carrying, the sheathing and siding patched back so the repair does not read as a patch, and the opening trimmed twice — outside to keep water out of the new cut, inside so it looks like it was always there.

It is worth asking for on a room that has light at one end and none along its length. See one we did.

How it usually goes

Most of this work moves quickly. A handful of windows is often a weekend; a whole-home replacement runs longer but still measures in days rather than weeks, because the openings already exist and there is no structural work to schedule around.

You get the same arrangement as every other project here: the person who looks at the openings and prices the job is the person who does the work and answers the phone afterwards. There is nobody to hand you off to.

The house gets cleaned up at the end of each day, not at the end of the job.

What we will tell you honestly

Sometimes replacement is not the right call. A window that sticks because the frame has dropped, or one that fogs because a seal has failed, can occasionally be addressed without replacing the whole unit — and a house that needs siding or trim work more urgently than it needs glass should have that said out loud rather than quoted around.

If windows are part of a larger exterior project, it is usually worth sequencing them together rather than paying to open the same walls twice.