I have always had problems renovating my home, which is one of the reasons I started focusing so seriously on finding contractors. I began going through and looking for incredible places who could help with everything from replacing my carpet to taking care of finding new glass, and a few months ago, I was able to find a contractor that I felt really great about working with. They went through my home and replaced all of the auto glass, and I was really impressed with how great of a job they did for me. This blog is all about getting help with glass.
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Your home is your castle, and its windows matter just as much as your walls or ceiling when it comes to creating a beautiful, comfortable personal kingdom. But when one of those windows becomes cracked, chipped, or otherwise damaged, you may not want to pay a king's ransom for a full-scale replacement. Some situations lend themselves perfectly well to window repair, while others give you no reasonable option but to replace the troubled window entirely. These four scenarios may help guide you toward the right decision.
Damaged Vintage Glass
You might not think twice about replacing an ordinary sheet of glass in an ordinary window -- but if you see a crack in your precious antique stained-glass window, you probably can't bear the thought of replacing it with something less special. Giving up prematurely on a piece of artfully-crafted vintage glass not only robs your home of some of its personality; it can also tangible reduce the home's value. This is definitely a case where repair is preferable to replacement if at all possible. Older windows can be surprisingly simple to fix, while individual bits of broken glass can often be swapped out for authentic equivalents or reproductions obtained from specialty and salvage stores.
Invasion by Rot and Mold
Has your home turned into a repository for allergens? All the coughing and sneezing you've been doing lately may be due to mold, the end result of moisture seeping in through your window frame or casement. Check these structures carefully for water stains, rotted wood, and other signs of leakage or damage. If you see water stains but no other decay as of yet, you may be able to have the entire window removed, and the rotted elements replaced, while retaining the same glass. But if you see fog or water between two panes of a double-pane window, you've lost the thermal seal between those two sheets of glass, and you need to replace the whole thing.
Cracks and Chips
That hailstorm or baseball should have shattered your window into a thousand fragments, when in fact it just left you with an ugly chip or crack in the glass. With luck, a single-pane window can be repaired fairly quickly and easily, sparing you the cost of installing new glass. Repair usually involves injecting clear resin into the chipped or cracked area for all-but-invisible results. Once again, however, the caveat about double-pane windows applies. If a crack or hole in the glass has penetrated the area containing the inert gas in a double-pane window, that window has lost its thermal barrier and will also be prone to fogging up. So plan on either repairing your single-pane window or replacing your double-pane window.
Insulation Improvements
Does your home have temperature-control problems? If you have to drive up your energy usage to compensate for abnormally chilly or warm rooms, the windows in those rooms probably have old-fashioned single-pane glass. Single panes are cheap to install but offer very little in the way of thermal insulation. If your old single-pane window has sustained damage, this might serve as the perfect opportunity to treat yourself to something better. Instead of simple fixing what you have, consider replacing that broken single-pane glass with double-pane glass. This window design has a layer of inert gas sandwiched between the two panes, providing up to 24 percent greater energy efficiency in cold weather and 18 percent greater energy efficient in hot weather.
If you're still unsure of which way to go, your best move is to contact your local window repair service and have them evaluate the situation first-hand. Approach the situation sensibly, and you'll have your castle back to its state of regal glory in no time!
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