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I'm hoping to get some advice from some seasoned homeowners. We've been gathering estimates for replacement windows for a mid-century modern house and are surprised how expensive the estimates have been. We want to keep the aesthetics of the house as close to its original as we can, which means we have to look at something like Marvin's Ultimate line—wood with aluminum cladding exterior, wood interior. We knew they would be pricey, but we just didn't know how pricey. We have 25 windows varying in size with the largest being approximately 8 feet x 6 feet. We priced out some Marvin Ultimates and it came in at $76,000 to upgrade the entire house. I had figured on it being more like $30-40k, so $76k is certainly sticker shock.
My thoughts are we would probably never get this money back if we sold the house at some point. However, we looked at some less expensive alternatives but they just didn't seem to match the style of the house very well.
As for the comfort level of the house, it's been very pleasant as we've gotten into December in the northeast. We heat with gas and will be getting our next bill very soon so that will be a better gauge, but the house hasn't felt cold.
So what would you do? Is it absolutely insane to spend that much on windows, even if we spread it out over a few years? Or do we put that money into other projects (bathroom renovation, exterior stain, landscaping, etc)?
Our current thought is we will replace 4 or 5 standard size windows now, which would be around $10k. That would ensure the bedrooms are taken care of and it would give us a chance to really experience how these windows would look with the rest of the house and the larger windows. Any advice is greatly appreciated.
From an engineering standpoint, this is a bad approach. All the windows in your house are passing heat to the outside, and for discussion let's say they all have the same R value. If you replace just a few, the same as if you had an electrical circuit with say 10 resistors in parallel and you put say 3 higher resistance resistors in to replace 3 originals - the overall current changes very little. So from a standpoint of the windows paying for themselves in lower heat bills - they won't.
If you do all the windows, you would have some improvement but if say the doors are not insulated, the heat now not going out the windows will to some extent go out the doors.
If what you are trying to do is reduce heat bills, probably an "energy audit" would be the best place to start.
As to recovering the window cost on re-sale - some of that depends on the rest of the house and the rest of the neighborhood, not so much now, as how it is when you want to sell.
In any case, I wouldn't do this during the winter, I'd wait for late spring anyway.
There are a bunch of us who love our old windows because they are original, but because it's economical too. Apparently only if you do the work yourself. I was just quoted $1000-$1200 ea for a 3x6 9 over 9, remove, take down to bare wood, repaint, re-glaze, re-install. It's hard to justify that times 40 windows....gotta look at ROI.
I wouldn't mind doing the remove/replace work myself, but I doubt my dear spouse would ever agree to the time frame, start to finish. For $50K I could have the best tilt to clean, Renewal by Anderson has to offer in dual pane replacement windows.
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