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dpb

wrote:
....
You're seriously just being unnecessarily difficult. You're not
reading what I wrote and I can only surmise that at this point you're
purposely trying to find fault. ...

No, not really (read further if you want to see what I was actually
responding to)...

You're thinking I'm telling you the *windows* are out of plumb. I
never said that. I said the *trim* is out of plumb. Don't try to look
for fault by reading things that aren't even there. The windows are
100% straight and level. When it was necessary to do so, the installer
cut out the old trim and installed new trim (including a new sill) so
the windows would all be level.

I don't have any doubt the new windows were installed square and plumb
in out-of-square openings. What wasn't addressed in any of the
postings prior was the root cause for the openings being so out of
square. From another posting--"...because the wall containing one of
our bay windows had settled to the point where the old window wouldn't
completely close, and wouldn't lock at all, because of the slant in the
sill. The
installer said not to worry about it, and he did obviously get the new
window in there. I know that an 83 year old house is probably not
going to settle any further..." and "the settling of that area of the
house was in part *caused* by the old windows, which had missing storm
windows and holes (from rot) in the outer part of the sill that looked
to me like they went straight down into the wall."

If that doesn't sound like a description of some pretty serious or at
least potentially serious structural problems that needed addressing
before (or at least at the same time as) the windows were replaced, I
don't know what would. I've seen a large number of old houses in which
such major defects were not addressed but all the cosmetic work was
done over the existing structure. Once done, the places looked
gorgeous, but unfortunately, the underlying faults came back to haunt
and most of that investment turned out to have been wasted as it was
required to be torn out and redone to fix foundation or sillplates or,
....

You also indicated that the trim was integral to the walls, not simply
a surface mount and I did make the assumption that by "Colonial" you
were really meaning something far older than what you are/were, thus
making the likelihood of such structural problems much higher. Again,
note that I spent quite some time VA working on restorations of many of
ante-bellum and older houses and have seen all of these problems and
more. If the trim was out of square, that implied to me the walls were
out of square, too. And, if they were, there had to be a reason, and
that reason might not be good.

....

...you'd probably tell somebody to replace their roof because their ceiling paint was peeling.

No, but I'd certainly tell them it would behoove them to find out _why_
the ceiling paint is/was peeling just in case there were moisture on
the top side of the plaster from a leaky roof. Saved more than one
ceiling from falling that way...

If there has been adequate inspection or other work undertaken (which
wasn't mentioned in response to any of the other comments until the
last post), that's good and takes care of the concerns, but I still
don't feel at all that voicing the concern was unwarranted given the
information that was available at the time of each comment.