Windows for the House

Wyatt and I finally after almost two years of talking about it and three estimates signed a contract for new windows throughout the house. I don't know how people with bigger houses do it. We have a whopping 1200sf. if you include the basement, if not then we have about 800sf living space. In that space we have six 30 w x 51 h upstairs, four 30 w x 51 h on the main floor, one 24w x 15 h in the kitchen and one really funky sized one in the basement that hasn't been opened since I bought the house. That is a lot of windows for a small house, but it's great to have that much natural light at the same time. So why am I writing this? Because the estimates were all over the place. The first two don't include getting the basement window fixed.

1. Lowe's vinyl windows: low-e glass, grids. $2600 for windows, $2600 for labor, screens were an extra $300. Plus the cost of the estimate of $30. (Yes they charged for an estimate) Pros: Cheap, close by, easy to handle problems if they arose. Cons: They only measured the kitchen window and one window in the living room because "all the other windows are standard" They also told me the screens were worthless...This raised an eyebrow for me. I personally don't want bugs flying in my house. I also thought it was odd that on a 60 year old house someone would assume the windows are all the same size!
2. Home Depot vinyl windows: low-e glass, grids, screens included. $1690 labor, $2310 windows. I didn't get them to come out and do an estimate because they wanted $60! I spoke with the window guy at Home Depot and had him look up the price of my window based on the lowe's estimate and measurement. Pros: Price Cons: The windows on display were not very convincing that they would last for more than 1 or two years at most. Very cheap construction feel and look, sub contracted out so it's not a Home Depot responsible worker, Had to have an official estimate ($60), couldn't come after 5pm to do measurement, couldn't do work on Saturday.
3. Thompson Creek Windows: low-e glass, grids on top, screens included, windows tilt out for cleaning AND can be taken out completely if working on the house etc. Initial price $13K, contract price $7,500. No charge for estimate, guy came to my house on a SATURDAY morning at 9am to give us the presentation and measure every window in the house. Pros: Estimate/Measurement done on my time schedule not theirs, Brought a fully deconstructed window to show how it's made, had display window that we were allowed to take completely apart and mess around with, A "double" lifetime warranty which will come in handy when we sell the house. This means the next owners have the windows under warranty should anything short of an act of god affect the windows. (we did make him define Act of God which essentially came down to anything our homeowners would cover normally such as fire, hurricane, and alien invasion.) Human stupidity is covered in the warranty. Will come do the install of the windows anyday but Sunday Cons: Price. They were more than double the other estimates. To get that price we had to make a decision almost on the spot. The guy understood our desire not to make a quick decision and was willing for us to step out of the room and talk about it.

We chose to go with Thompson Creek Windows. Yes they cost more, but the product was of much higher quality, had an impecable Better Business Bureau write up, incredible warranty, was flexible and a local option. There was no subcontracting of the work, the factory is based on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and the price was about where I expected to spend.

Oh, the reason we waited so long...tax rebate in 2006 for installing energy efficient windows.