Window Replacement in Hallowell, ME

Vinyl window replacement is our recommendation for a Hallowell house outside the local historic district when the owner wants sash (the part that moves) that never needs paint. Of vinyl, fiberglass or wood-clad, vinyl is the lowest-priced, and a white one-over-one suits a plain opening.

Some of those houses stand inside the Shoreland Overlay District, within 250 feet of the Kennebec, where the overlay applies on top of the base zoning. We confirm the overlay with the code office before a frame comes out, and an insert (a whole new unit sized to slip inside the old jambs) goes in only when that frame is square and dry.

Wood window replacement is the right choice for most houses in the district, whose National Register listing counts dwellinghouses of every period from Federal on. A wood-clad unit shows wood wherever you touch it indoors, with aluminum, vinyl or fiberglass where the weather hits, ordered in the old sash's own grid with simulated divided lites, muntins glued to the glass on both sides.

Where the Planning Board reviews a window change, section 9-558 says worn features "shall be repaired rather than replaced, wherever possible." We tell you plainly when an old sash is worth keeping, and when it is not, we replace it rather than restore it.

Entry door replacement on these houses comes down to keeping the old frame and fitting a new slab to it, or setting a prehung door, which arrives already hung in its own frame on its own sill. All but 55 of the 330 dwellinghouses in the National Register district date from the 19th century or earlier, so many of those door frames have stood well over a century.

A soft threshold settles the choice: if the sill under the old door gives to an awl, the whole frame comes out. Section 9-553 lists a change in the size of door and window openings among the exterior architectural features, so we keep a district doorway at its old size.