Cost to increase window size in stucco home (sale, house)

[easteraz]

Hi,
I have a window in our home office that is very small for the room/wall. I would like to increase the size of the window. Our home is about 5 yrs old, typical AZ stucco build. Given the location of the room, I do not think there is any major electrical or anything else in this wall - just electrical to the outlets there.

Current window is about 4 feet wide, and relatively square-ish. I would like to put in a window that is rectangular, maybe 6 feet by 5 feet or so...I haven't even measured yet, so I'm just sort of guesstimating.

What I would like to know is the ROUGH cost to change it out - including window/other materials cost, structural/stucco/drywall work. Assume a relatively high quality, double pane window (they actually have like sort of white 'lattice' between the panes to simulate the look of old style windows - the effect simulates the glass panes look you might see on a french door)

I know this is not enough to give a good estimate, but I'm looking for order of magnitude type numbers. Am I looking at 1k, 2k, 4k, etc.

Thanks for any help,

Kevin

[Zippyman]

Originally Posted by easteraz

Hi,
I have a window in our home office that is very small for the room/wall. I would like to increase the size of the window. Our home is about 5 yrs old, typical AZ stucco build. Given the location of the room, I do not think there is any major electrical or anything else in this wall - just electrical to the outlets there.

Current window is about 4 feet wide, and relatively square-ish. I would like to put in a window that is rectangular, maybe 6 feet by 5 feet or so...I haven't even measured yet, so I'm just sort of guesstimating.

What I would like to know is the ROUGH cost to change it out - including window/other materials cost, structural/stucco/drywall work. Assume a relatively high quality, double pane window (they actually have like sort of white 'lattice' between the panes to simulate the look of old style windows - the effect simulates the glass panes look you might see on a french door)

I know this is not enough to give a good estimate, but I'm looking for order of magnitude type numbers. Am I looking at 1k, 2k, 4k, etc.

Thanks for any help,

Kevin

Having just bought a bunch of windows & doors, I'll bite..

The window itself is really no big deal as far as cost.. Aluminum, vinyl, fiberglass, wood-clad, get whatever you like & pay a little extra for quality if it's a window you want to open & close a lot. The window isn't the expensive part.

A huge 7 foot tall, by 6 foot wide, round-top "architectural" window (actually a 1/2 round window "mulled" to a rectangular window) cost me about $800 on sale @lowes - and both the depot & lowes have window "sales" every week or two for 15-20% off.. I bought it as a bronze-tinted/low-e/grates inside the glass/ setup, so none of that was particularly expensive. A "plain" 6 ft by 5 foot tinted/low-e window for the back of the house was about $400.. and I think the tinting added $50-$60 to the cost? Mine were Pella, but Milgard, Anderson, etc all have decent windows at decent prices.

(Side note, I would *not* buy pella windows at Lowes again, I bought 20-something windows in three different shipments & prolly 75% of them had scuffs/dings & minor damage on them
when they arrived, not *quite* enough damage to send them back & wait another 3 weeks for new ones, but enough to **** me off, because my $10,000 worth of windows & doors were handled roughly in shipping & lowes blamed pella, pella blamed lowes & I'm the one who got to spend a Saturday scrubbing the scuffs & trying to finesse the dings out)


The big wrinkle with enlarging a window is you need a bigger (longer) "header" over the window & to do that legally, you want a building permit. So there's a couple hundred bucks, and to get that permit, you'll want a drawing done by an engineer that states "adding a header of 2x10" pine lumber of a window six feet long is safe".. Not as expensive as you might think, maybe $200-ish?

Then you're paying someone to chop out the old window, install the header & stuff the new window in.. According to the drawing specified by your engineer. Maybe $600-$800~ish? It's not even a full day's work for someone with experience..

Finishing I'd figure $200 for a stucco-dude (typical minimum charge), and $150-200 for a drywall-dude (minimum charge)..

Soooo.. Two grand, soaking-wet, done legally & with permits & ready-for paint touch ups?

Maybe half that if you hire a handyman on Craigslist to do it without permits?

[easteraz]

Thanks Zippy - great info.