Window Shopping

[Carol D.]

As much as I love to shop, the whole window experience is a little overwhelming. We are planning on building an old world, French county type home. Looking for very nice wood (interior) windows with a traditional classic look. Any suggestions on which brands to start looking at? If there are several brands that match my needs, of coarse I want the best $value$!!! Thank you!

[Rich]

I'm not sure who does solid wood windows anymore.. Anderson or Marvin might do hardwoods.. I don't think Pella does.

[doyle]

I think she means she wants the inside to be wood. Several manufacturers (like Rich mentioned) make vinyl-clad windows with nice wood on the interior side. Start out looking and pricing (and gathering brochures) at Home Depot and Lowes. They can special-order just about anything you could want at a pretty good price. Look through all the home magazines until you find a window that you like, then find who sells that window for the best price.

[Rich]

haha.. I think you are right. I was thinking she wanted interior windows all wood. Or I should say all exposed wood.

[Carol D.]

I want the woindows to be natural wood on the inside. I will have a stain applied to make them look old. The outside I was going to paint a specific color but it looks like a lot of these companies come with colors already applied to the outside.

[kinger]

If you want the French country look, many of the window companies are now making French casement windows that look pretty authentic. You can get them with bare wood on the inside and if you don't want to mess with the maintenance on the outside, get aluminum clad. They all make them with a wide selection of colors. I believe Pella, Kolbe, and Marvin all make these. There are plenty others but 3 should keep you busy for now. They are not cheap, but they look great. Good luck!

[Carol D.]

Great, thank you! Of the three you listed which would you say is the best value $$$?

[kinger]

First of all, are you purchasing these windows yourself or will your contractor get them? Generally your contractor can get a better price, but may not pass those savings on to you. If you really want to save money, you can try telling the window sales rep that you have a contractor but to save costs you want to buy these windows directly at contractor pricing. Best value? That's hard to say. Every window sales rep has room to work with dollar wise, so it depends on how good you are at negotiating. When you are getting bids, let the salesmen know you are also going to get bids from the others. Of the three I mentioned, I believe Marvin makes a nice product but is the most pricey. I have never used Pella but believe they are less expensive than Marvin. The Kolbe's should be the least expensive of the three but I just read some convincing concerns with the Kolbe's being defective and leaking over at the GardenWeb's building a home forums. You might want to research that.
http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/build/msg0619241823851.html?32
You may also want to look at Andersen and Weathershield but I'm not sure if they make a French casement.
Good luck!

[Rich]

This isn't in reply to the OP - but someone asked me the other day why I allow posts and signature links to other forums. Kind of like shooting myself in the foot one said. But the way I look at it - as long as the user gets the information I'm alright with it. Sure I'd rather everyone posted on other forums and put links to my forum - but I'll take what I can get to help the users of this forum. I suppose I could request that those off-site links could be unlinked instead of linked.. but that's alright.

[Link]

If you are looking at all wood windows Marvin and Pella Architectural Series are your best bet. (You can also get these in aluminum clad.) You can paint the outside to match and stain the interior as you wish. Also you can get alternate species of wood on the interior if you wish. Marvin makes a nice French Casement.

[mjpliv]

This isn't in reply to the OP - but someone asked me the other day why I allow posts and signature links to other forums. Kind of like shooting myself in the foot one said. But the way I look at it - as long as the user gets the information I'm alright with it. Sure I'd rather everyone posted on other forums and put links to my forum - but I'll take what I can get to help the users of this forum. I suppose I could request that those off-site links could be unlinked instead of linked.. but that's alright.

Nobody visits mine anyway :cry:

[espice]

Carol, I was doing some research my self and of the window brands suggested in these posts, Pella Marvin and Kolbe, I would be careful of Kolbe And Kolbe, they are having problems. I found this site that has information for consumers about Kolbe. I emailed them and they were very informative. Here is the site I found http://www.leakywindows.com