I have to say that windows never really excited me. Sure, when I pass by a church and see the beautiful stained glass I will often stop and admire them. But other than that, they’re just quadrilateral pieces of a combination of soda ash, limestone, and sand. Sexy, right?
Let the sunshine in… but keep the creepers out
For as much as I am #TeamSummer, I will admit that I love those coolish days and nights when you can open up the windows and let the fresh air in. Fresh may be debatable, but for the purpose of this article we’re going to assume that all of my plants and shrubs and trees are purifying my air.
When I lived in my first floor loft apartment in Philadelphia, I would open the massive windows and enjoy the breeze. I didn’t expect that it would also result in random passersby (and people I knew) walking up to the open windows and looking in. Some started conversations. Others didn’t expect that someone would be inside looking right back at them.
At one point, I actually started selling food and drink. Think of it as walk-up drive-thru restaurant without the fries and the political stuntery.
When I bought my first home in Philly, everything was new. Okay, homeowners later found out that a lot of the things (including the windows) were not as new as the builder had led us to believe. I continued to embrace the open windows and, since it was a townhouse, it meant that I could keep the windows on the upper levels open at night.
Would you like to play a game?
I had planned to continue my windows open philosophy when I bought Kroll Manor, but… that doesn’t mean that the house planned to cooperate.
If you’ve examined any of the photos of the house, you’ll know that I have quite a few windows. Most of the windows were original to the house. That meant that they probably had not been touched since the 1950s. The windows were single-pane aluminum clad with separate heavy storm windows. The insulation value was probably zero or below zero, if that is actually possible.
None of the screens were in the windows. The screens, of which there were probably close to 150, were scattered about the property. None were marked to indicate which windows they belonged to. It was like an Easter egg hunt and a Mensa application all in one.
Over a couple of months, I was able to figure out which screens belonged to which windows and I labeled the screens with a Sharpie so that I’d never have to play the match game ever again. Truth be told, I actually enlisted the help of teenage twins and told them it was a fun new game: Find the Screens!
You don’t know what you got ’til it won’t open
During the first winter, I found that, because of their age, most of the storm windows were letting cold air seep into the house. Brrr. At the time, the house was heated by a monstrous oil boiler that, while incredibly efficient for something of its age, was very expensive when it came time to fill up the oil tanks. So I invested in some of the Frost King weather tape and, I have to say, it did make a pretty noticeable difference in keeping out the polar vortex that seemed to set up shop over the house.
Sufficiently proud of myself that I’d made it through a brutal winter, when the first warm spring day arrived, I decided it was time to let in some of the fresh Lehigh Valley air. That’s when I discovered that the majority of the windows did not open. Some had been nailed shut, while others were caulked shut.
What kind of person makes it so that you cannot open any of the windows in your home?! I had my theories. I later found out who did it (I blamed the wrong person) and why, but I will tell you that it still makes zero sense to me.
This was no way to live. I knew at some point I would need to find a way to get the windows operating. Not allowing any kind of air circulation in the house had to be unhealthy.
Read the Manor Makeover series
We don’t need your stinkin’ windows
Things took an unexpected turn one night when I was watching television in the library, one of the few rooms where the windows actually opened. It started to rain and I had to scurry to close the windows before the rain got inside the house. When I turned the handle to close the middle window, the window fell out of the house. The entire window. Fell. Out of the house. I raced outside into the storm in my nighttime clothes to try to get the window back into place. Luckily, the window was still secured on the bottom tenth of the frame. It took me about 10 to 15 minutes, but I was able to push the window back into place.
“Dan, what makes a window fall out of the house?” Funny you should ask. A hole had developed in the box gutter above the window. Someone prior to my living here, decided that the hole could be plugged with some sort of gummy substance. Honestly, it looked like bubble gum, but I keep telling myself that no one would be foolish enough to fix a leak with some Bazooka. The hole must have been there for quite some time because the entire wooden frame of the bay window had rotted. All of five of the windows were at risk of falling out at any time.
The next day I made two calls. The first was to J. Wilson Enterprises, who I had hired to keep the slate roof maintained. They are masters at copperworking, so I asked them to help repair the box gutter. The second call was to a local window and door company, Hess Windows, which is not affiliated with the Hess family that owned and operated the Hess’s department stores.
Buy more, pay less — no really!
With rotted windows replaced and a catastrophe averted, I knew what was next. I was going to want more new windows. With so many windows, I decided to focus on the areas that would get the most use. Those areas included my office, the primary bedroom, and larger central windows.
As I started pricing out the cost to replace windows, I realized that it was going to take a winning Powerball ticket to get them all done. Or a bank robbery. Or finding the lost Max Hess fortune in a secret hiding place somewhere on the property. First, there were a lot of windows… eight in the primary bedroom alone. Second, some were very large and most companies would not make casement windows (the kind that crank out) in a large size.
Things became slightly more pressing when I planned to renovate the formal dining room. That will be the topic of a future column. I didn’t think it made sense to redo an entire room and leave the seven crappy windows in place. Every company I called said that they could replace the windows. Then they come and do a measure and say that they really couldn’t replace the windows. If I wanted new windows, they’d have to be stationary… meaning they would never open.
You made me promises, promises
Finally, I called Pella. Again, I was told they could give me what I wanted. I’d heard that story before. The salesperson entered the data into his computer. This was usually the time when the salesperson would say that they were wrong. To my surprise, they really could give me functional windows. Then came the sticker shock. I won’t share the jaw-dropping price, but it was a lot. A lot a lot. The salesperson then asked me if I had any other windows that I wanted to replace. I thought to myself, “Sure! Let’s just print up some money in the basement and buy all the windows.
I told him that I eventually wanted to replace all the windows in the front of the house on the second floor. That was about another 22 or so windows. He measured them and entered all the data into his computer. After a few tippity-taps and grunts, he turned the computer around and showed me the price. The price to do all 30-some windows was only a small amount more than it was to get just the seven dining room windows replaced.
I asked him if he was certain that the price was accurate. He nodded. “Are you absolutely sure?” I asked. This time he vocalized the word yes. I signed my name on that contract before he had a chance to make sure that he’d carried the one and had the right price.
Level up!
With so many windows replaced… Let me pause for a moment. I could tally an actual number of windows that have been replaced, but it could take me days to walk around the house and do that. Plus, I might get sidetracked with other things and never finish this entry. If this were The Price Is Right and I had to make my best guess without going over, I’d say 63. As an asterisk, that counts openings that have two casement windows.
All of that said, I knew that the new windows were going to be better than the existing windows. They are all double-pane and have an actual R-factor. Plus, the openings were all caulked to make sure that none of that pesky cold (or hot) air infiltrated the house when it wasn’t wanted or needed. Still, I was skeptical. Would there be a noticeable difference in such a big house that doesn’t have all of the modern insulation that new construction has?
During this same timeframe, I also replaced the nearly century-old oil boiler with a super efficient gas boiler. That will also probably be a future Manor Makeover story.
… Or in this case, level down
The heating expenses dropped dramatically. The totals were 10-to-15% of what the previous owners’ reported on their seller disclosure papers. The cooling costs also dropped. The return on investment was initially pegged at 20 to 30 years. I estimate it now at 10 years, or possibly less.
With empirical data firmly in hand, I decided that it was time to knock out the rest of the windows in the main house. That included all of the front-facing windows on the first floor. Several of the windows fell into that “too big to open” category, but again, it wasn’t an issue with Pella. Another fun twist involved windows in the formal living room. The salesperson told me that the openings were built down and the replacement windows could actually be taller than what was there. We decided we would do one less window per opening to capitalize on the new finding to allow more glass and, obviously, more light into the room.
I haven’t got time for the pane
Today marks an important milestone here at Kroll Manor and the reason for this particular entry. The last remaining original windows are being replaced. That’s another nine windows that will be fully functional with double panel insulated goodness.
So to revisit my opening thought in this entry: I am sort of excited by windows. I have learned far more about windows than I ever thought I’d know. I’ve also probably spent far more money on windows than I’d ever thought I’d spend. According to experts, the average return on investment for new windows is about 72% when installing energy-efficient options. I have to imagine that one of the reasons (of many) that the house was on the market for as long as it was before I bought it was the drafty, non-functioning, antiquated windows.
So, yes. Those quadrilateral pieces of a combination of soda ash, limestone, and sand are a lot sexier than we give them credit for.
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