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smaloney_gw

Switching a casement window with a double hung - problem?

smaloney
11 years ago

We have just replaced 3 out of the 17 windows in our small older home; we will eventually do them all, but this was necessitated by damage from a storm (and a basketball in one case!) One of the windows was an old Anderson double casement and we wanted it replaced with a double hung (the house has casements on the front, but all the rest are double hung; this window is on the side of the house and all other windows on the side are double hung.) The new windows were all supposed to be custom, and they are Simonton 5500.

We used a company that we have used on multiple occasions in the past for siding, roofing, gutters, etc. Every previous job was done quickly and perfectly. This on the other hand has been a disaster for a variety of reasons that I won't go into here. One of my concerns was that the exterior trim on the window that had originally been a casement wound up being about double the width of the trim on all the other windows in the house - almost 6 inches around whereas all the other windows have about 3 inches in trim. (There were some other issues, including the fact that on the interior, there was a big bag between the window and the wall that had been filled with a couple of inches of very uneven and noticeable caulk.)

I complained, the window installer came and protested some, then agreed to replace it. He is doing the work now and the end result is only 1/4 inch less of the giant white trim on the exterior of the window. I'm not happy, but he keeps saying that I am an idiot and that he cannot do any better than this because of the framing of the house. It doesn't help that his language skills aren't terribly fluent, and that he is the chief window installer and no one else in the company seems authorized or willing to inspect his work.

So after that long backdrop, can someone please explain to me why it might be that a double-hung replacement for a casement window would require so much additional exterior trim? It is close to the front of the house and it looks pretty awful - almost like we just shoved some standard size window in there with cheap, unskilled labor.) I'm so sorry if this is a stupid question, or if I haven't explained it well. I just feel very frustrated because we could have gone with another smaller firm and paid much less, but this firm had done such a great job on everything else in the past that it seemed smarter for those like us, with limited knowledge/time on construction matters, to use them again here. (Don't even get me started on the fact that they also replaced a couple of small pieces of siding that had been damaged in a storm, but installed the totally wrong color, and a manager spent several days insisting to me that I must be wrong. Luckily in that case a construction supervisor intervened and got it fixed.)

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