The most important rule of thumb for any window replacement is the installation. By hiring someone you know that has already done a great job and earned your trust is ideal. The fact that he specializes in doors & windows is priceless. The extra money you pay for a good trustworthy installer is above & beyond going with an installer you know nothing about. The horror stories from people like yourself who got totally ripped off by paying big money for their best installer, is overwhelming. By having this contractor in advance is 75% of the task. He more than likely has his own supplier that can get you the Bay Unit you want without all the smoke & fire sales techniques used by the local window companies. Stay with the one you trust! I can't emphasize how important this is for any consumer. The extra money you pay is just like buying anything on the market today. You pay more for quality & craftsmanship. I can tell you right now that I'm not the cheapest installer in my neck of the woods, but you can ask any of my customers how their jobs have gone and if I stand behind my work. I've spent a lot of time training and grooming my installation crews to be the best. I seek more money than the others just because I pay my installers more than the others. This way I keep my quality installers happy and working, while offering the customer the best I can. I also offer my customers a 15 year warranty on the installation. This is something you don't see from many of the other installation companies. I can offer higher quality and better services to my customers because I have great trust in my installers. So it does pay to spend a little more money for the Cadillac than you think. Just don't go overboard and pay to much. Good Luck!!!

Sounds like the GC knows what he is doing and trust him, most important...if he takes him time and he is not cheap...that is also a good sign since you already have a history with him and youknow his is a quality guy

If you like his work and trust his professionalism, you are set.

A window shop will likely contract the job out to another GC anyway or worse, it may just contract out to a window installer. You really have to be careful about switching if you already have a good GC.

As an example, we had a window shop "installer" come out to look at the openings where he would install two large banks of French doors. The sides of the openings had visibly old 2x4 door framing that I wanted replaced but I said nothing and let him talk. He said nothing about those 2x4's the whole time. When I asked innocently if he would replace them, he said no, he would simply attach the door frame to those old, probably rotting 2x4's. That was when we decided to not go with that shop.

A GC from another shop came out and gave us a detail run-down of what he would do, why he would do it and how he would do it. He was patient with my questions and noticed all the problems that I had already noticed and listed in private. He got our project even though he charged more.

So a GC is normally a better bet than just an "installer" for a larger project.

Hi all,

Thank you all for your very helpful responses. It didn't occur to me (although it makes perfect sense now) that a windows place would just sub the job out to a GC. I guess I did assume they would sub the more construction related bay window work and that is the part I'm most concerned about - which is why I wanted to go with our GC.

Not only does Kent do good quality work with a lot of attention to detail, he's honest and fair. When he went to prepare his final bill for us on our kitchen he realized that the job had taken FAR longer than he'd originally estimated (over double, I think). He called me up to apologize and admitted that, although a good part of the delay was not his fault, the majority was his fault (I'd say it was more like about 50/50). He said he'd underestimated how long installing the cabinets would take - and he didn't charge us for the additional time (about $1000) plus he didn't charge us the actual cost of a feature he'd talked us into doing which cost about double what he had told us it would cost when he talked us into it.

I just told DH about your comments and I think he's inclined to agree we should just use Kent - YEAH, less work for me (since I would be the person who would end up calling window places and arranging for estimates, etc).

meo

I know he used Milgard for our kitchen windows. I don't know if he uses them exclusively or not. Any thoughts on Milgard vis a vis quality?

-meo