Thanks for the info... I truly appreciate the feedback. I have decided to go with Milgard Style Line for the project and am only going to have the lower sashes tempered. The chances of anyone falling into the windows would be slim at best. The only glass that stands a higher probability is the current Arcadia (sliding glass) door in my atrium but I am replacing it and the others in the house with Anderson 400 series gliders which all have tempered glass as standard.

Thank you all -- searching for "low windows" was very helpful I even read of some people who left the windows and worked the kitchen around them without replacing or covering them up, and I really am excited to see what we can come up with keeping this in mind. We had one such window in the bathroom, IN the bathtub/shower stall. The previous owners had covered the wall with a shower curtain, but the wall/window just couldn't withstand all of the moisture. So, we did remove and replace that one with a smaller one, unfortunately. If we had another bathroom, I'd have loved to have kept that big, old window there right where it was, and designated that as a "bath only" bathroom. But I did keep the pink tub that was there and am so glad that I did. ;) Thank you al for yor input. I'm very excited about embracing the windows and working with, instead of against, them.

My builder and I were just talking about our family room windows. We are doing a wall of windows that go across about 180" of space and he says we have to have about 3" between. He will use 2 (2x6's) studs turned sideways between each of the plans called for 32" wide windows to fasten/attach the window flange to the structure. He prefers that to mulled and I much prefer the look so it was a win/win. Not sure about your particular requirements we are on the East Coast, but we are doing impact resistant windows with grids because we are at the beach. This makes them nice because they already meet the code requirements for coming down to the floor.

If the windows had been treated as one when they were being trimmed out, without drywall in between them (and beefier trim all around!), you’d have a much easier time deciding on a window treatment. Fortunately, this can easily be done now: Now you have ONE (double) window that can be treated as such! You could also make it a “triple” window: