All has been quiet on the condo renovation front lately. That's mostly because I spent several weeks painting all of the walls, baseboards and ridiculous ornate trim that is literally all over this place. Having wood beams running all across your ceiling with detail from top to bottom is great, until you have to paint over an old oil-based high gloss paint everywhere.
I painted after work. I painted on weekends. I blackmailed friends and family to help me paint. It wasn't pretty. Once I finally finished all that, I was ready to stop renovating for a while.
That changes today, as I'm having 15 brand new windows from Window World installed throughout my 1600-square foot condo.
New windows aren't always the sexiest part of a renovation, but the old ones were in such bad shape, that it was a necessity. Don't believe me? Well, I have pictures, so suck it.
Here you can see where the wood on the old windows is basically rotting away. Only about half of the windows would still open.
This is farther along that same window. I really think the whole thing would crumble if I pulled too hard trying to open it.
The poor condition of these windows, along with a 30 percent tax credit from Uncle Sam, were big reasons I decided to plunge into the window market. The first place I looked was Pella windows in Birmingham. I honestly don't remember the estimated price they gave me, because it caused me to black out and lose consciousness for a day or so. Let's just say I'd rather have a new car than new windows.
Then I called Window World after seeing an ad in The Birmingham News for $189 per window. That's a much more manageable figure than the Pella estimate. The final price worked out to be slightly higher than the $189 advertised, but still fit well within my budget.
I showed my parents the information I had gotten from Window World, and they ended up deciding to have the windows replaced in their house as well. I negotiated a discount of a couple hundred bucks for referring them.
I used some of the money from my first-time home-buyers' tax credit to pay for the windows. Then, I'll get 30% of the window money back on next year's tax return, so saying that these windows were sponsored by the U.S. government is pretty accurate.
The biggest drawback with Window World so far is that it took about 10 weeks from order to install. If you're looking for a rush job, you may need to look elsewhere, but I didn't mind the wait, and getting the best price was most important to me. Then again, the windows haven't been installed yet, so it may be premature to say the wait is the biggest drawback.
The crew of two installers are here pounding away, so I'm going to split. I'll write up a post-installation report (with photos, of course) tomorrow when the dust is settled and my furniture back in order.