The past few days have been very noisy and active around the house, as we have made our first major investment / improvement to our new home; we have had all the windows replaced. In addition to replacing all of the existing windows we change the front window completely by converting it from a large flat picture window to an oak framed bow-window! This changed the front dynamics of the house completely, it lets in a ton more light, increased our external view from the living room, and most importantly, made Melissa very happy!
We knew this was going to be our first major project from the beginning, as the inspection revealed some of them were original to the house. However, over the winter when I was working from home one day I discovered one of the windows was leaking pretty badly, so we had to bump this project up to help improve the efficiency of the house before the next winter. Over the winter we had time to think about what we wanted to do and who we wanted to do the work, and we narrowed it down to a few options, in the end we chose Hanson’s. We went with Hanson’s for a couple of reasons:
- They took the time to really explain windows to us
- They were providing the best warranty
- They offered the best financing
- They offered the best price
We had a couple of their competitors supply estimates and they were nowhere near as complete as Hanson’s was. The Hanson’s representative came to the house and actually spent almost 3 hours speaking with us and educating us on windows, including a display with a heat lamp and BTU reader and samples of the different windows to display their varying energy efficiency. He also went room to room, window to window, and took precise measurements and asked us what we wanted for each window in terms of efficiency, opening style, sash, and sill options. Additionally, he actually listened to what we wanted and went over the options we had to get those options, and made recommendations about the possible pros and cons of each. Comparatively speaking, one of their competitors was in our house for less than 10 minutes, guessed at the window sizes, told us we didn’t need to replace the main window (the one we converted to a bow!) because it was one of theirs and only “about 6 years old,” never asked us what we wanted, gave a quote and said “call me when you’re ready,” and left!
Hanson’s provides a lifetime warranty that transfers to the next purchaser should we ever sell the house. This is a full warranty that covers everything! For instance, if a baseball gets accidentally thrown through the bow-window, they come replace it for free no questions asked. This is for every window and screen they install, well the screens we would need to bring to them for repair, but the windows they come to the house and repair. Even the caulking is covered, should we ever notice the caulking is shrinking, cracking, or separating, just call them and schedule a repair appointment! This was an important benefit for us because we have some large price windows that we are replacing (namely the bow, sliding door, and octagon window) and should anything happen to them we don’t want to have to pay these amounts out-of-pocket again. In the end we replaced a total of 10 windows and 1 sliding door all with triple pane high-efficiency (0.23 U-value) replacement fiberglass filled vinyl windows. We need to stain or paint (we are leaning toward staining) all of the new sills and backings, but that will happen over the next few weeks.
Overall we are extremely happy with our choice and I have been highly impressed with the installation. The installation team consisted of a two-man crew, these are contractors who work exclusively on Hanson’s window installations. They did a great job with everything, and even replaced a pretty deep and long section of the base frame of the sliding door from where water had gotten in and rotted the frame. Something we didn’t know about until the old sliding door was removed! The contractor removed the rotted wood and cut new pieces to fit right on site, because they had everything they might need in their trailer. Including what was needed to re-screen our front door! Why our front door? Because they accidentally ripped the screen when bringing one of the old windows out of the house. To say we are highly satisfied is actually an understatement, we would certainly recommend them to anyone looking for new windows, and will absolutely look into their other services in the future!