When we renovated our first and second floors, we talked about replacing our windows but decided we didn’t want to spend the money. Windows are expensive and not as exciting as other renovation upgrades. But with the rest of the house nicely renovated, the windows were really bugging me.
Since we were ordering a door and window for our new garage, we decided it was time to replace the rest of the windows in the house. We bought 5 new windows: 2 bedroom windows, 2 dining room windows and a new bathroom window. The only windows we didn’t order were for the front of the house, as I’m still not sure how I want to change the look of the front.
From our kitchen renovation project, I knew that ordering windows would take some time, so I put in my order in December 2022 for all 5 house windows plus the garage door/window. The windows were ready in September, but it took some time before I could get my contractor to commit to installing the windows. Once we were confirmed to start work, I had our 5 windows delivered.
One at a time, they removed the old trim, removed the old window and installed the new window.
Unfortunately, when they were installing one of the dining room windows, the suction cup window installation thingy shattered the inside pane of glass. It was devastating.
Once the windows were installed, they added a jamb extension and screwed drywall pieces onto the wall. Our contractor put on the first coat of mud for me since he was quite delayed and we were out of time before the holidays.
Getting the sanding done was particularly important because Alex’s mom was coming to stay with us and the house was extremely messy from all the work. And there was no point cleaning anything if we were just going to add more drywall dust to the mix.
I managed to get my final coat sanded about an hour before she came, leaving me very limited time to get rid of all of the construction evidence right before her arrival.
I then primed the windows, painted the walls and painted the trim. With the trim finally painted, the new windows looked fantastic! Minus the very broken window.
The other bedroom window was installed in January when we had a brief mild day where they could complete the work. The installation was done in a day, which was great, but the wall was in considerably worse shape than the others so the mudding and sanding took me about a week.
Once all the mudding and sanding was done, I cleaned the room and painted the wall and trim. The kids were all sleeping in one room, which was extremely disruptive (particularly at bedtime), so we were happy to have access to the bedroom again.
More than 2 months after we installed the dining room window, Kolbe came back to fix the broken window. I managed to convince them to cover some of the cost, but I still had to cover a good portion. It was frustrating, but I also couldn’t leave the window broken anymore and needed to get it fixed.
The house looks so much better with the new windows and we’re so glad that we invested the time and money.