wrote in message
ups.com...
Hi all,

My wife and I recently bought a 1923 Colonial with mostly original
windows, most of which are totally shot. But generally, we bought the
house in part because it is still so warm and woody - we really dislike
vinyl, plastic and other modern materials. So we're looking to replace
our old wood windows with new wood windows - we're not interested in
vinyl or fiberglass (except maybe for the bathroom). I know this means
we'll be paying a bit more from the start.

We just had the Pella guy over (their own guy) and he quoted us an
installed price of basically $890 per window. That seemed high to me,
but he said that with an older home like ours, there basically is no
such thing as a standard window - they all have to be custom-made. He
could be right for all I know, but that's why I'm asking here. I know
you can go to Lowes and buy Pella windows retail for like $200 (before
installation), but those are all standard sizes. I don't know exactly
how to measure a window but from watching him do it, the measurements I
took myself later came out to be about 30 1/2" x 54" for most of our
windows. Sure enough, Lowes doesn't seem to show this size on their
web site (32x54 seems standard), and the guy also said we have a slope
in our sashes that they're going to have to compensate for.

The windows he quoted us did have low-E glass (I don't really know what
this means) and were "pocket" windows - I checked their web site and
I'm guessing these are the 850 series.

We want decent windows but really what we care about the most is just
having wood windows that aren't absolutely falling apart. One good
thing about Pella is that they offer financing - even if Pella is more
expensive, that tips the scales well in their favor and means we can
probably just do it now even with the high cost. But if I can get wood
windows for half the price somewhere else, we may have to put off and
save. I mean, this was like $8,000 total that this guy was talking
about - that's a significant amount of money, especially when it's not
even all the windows we eventually need done.

Neither of us is all that handy, so doing anything ourselves is
probably pretty much out. We do need a pro to do the install.

Is there anybody else offering wood windows for much cheaper than this,
installation included? We're in Long Island, NY if that makes a
difference (everything's probably more expensive here). We assumed
going through Pella themselves might save us a bit, so we were a little
surprised when we got the price quote.

TIA,

Jeff


Consider repair instead of replace. It wouldnt surprise me if the windows
can be refurbished for half of $890 a window quoted price. My friend and
his wife down in Georgia bought a Victorian about 12 years ago. The windows
were in pretty sad looking shape. One at a time they removed the windows
from the frame and stripped the old paint and made repairs to the window. It
took about 3 years to do all the windows in their home and they had never
done anything like this before. They did do a huge amount of research on
"how to" before starting and had repaired dozens of windows in their mind
before actually touching one. They started with a small bathroom window and
went from there. I think their main source of info was some books and/or
tapes form "This Old House". I know they also had restoration information
that included saving rotted wood on ships. Also just look for info on window
maintenance, just knowing how to remove and replace a window pane will be
really handy. They knew almost nothing about woodworking when they started
this project, now a two car garage on the property has become a fairly
extensive woodworking shop.

Bored, want to enrich your life, go out and do something you dont know how
to do.