Window Replacement in Manchester, ME

Vinyl window replacement suits most of the colonials, capes and ranches built here from the 1970s on, where nobody wants to scrape and paint a sash (the part of the window that moves) again. Plain one-over-one or two-over-two glass suits those houses, and of the three frame materials, vinyl is the cheapest.

If one of those frames checks out square and dry, an insert, meaning a complete window fitted into the old frame with the trim left on, costs less and gives up only a little glass. Where an awl sinks into the sill, we pull the frame too and rebuild from the rough opening, meaning the wall's own framing around the window.

Wood window replacement belongs on the farmhouses and other old houses among the 16.4 percent of Manchester housing that predates 1940, in a town settled in 1775 and known as The Forks in the early 1800s. On those houses we order wood-clad units to the old pane pattern, with wood facing the room and a cladding of aluminum, vinyl or fiberglass facing the weather.

Peeling paint alone does not prove an old sash is rotten, as National Park Service guidance on old wood windows notes. When the wood is sound, we say so and point you toward a sash repair, since we replace windows and do not restore them.

Entry door replacement on a Manchester lake house is settled at the threshold: sound wood there means only a new slab, fitted to the old frame, and soft wood means the whole door comes out. A prehung door is the slab, frame and sill sold as one unit, and it is the answer when "light under the door" has become rot under the door.

A prehung door goes onto a sill pan, and flashing tape laps from the jambs into the wall around it. Snowmelt off the step then drains back outside instead of soaking the floor below.