For years, we’ve had fogged windows. The windows in our living room were so fogged that I could have danced the polka in my underwear with the curtains open and nobody would have noticed. Last summer when we painted our house ourselves (plus a little help from my family) we told ourselves that we would use some of the money we saved by doing out own painting to get the living room windows replaced. But we never did, because we were sure it would be a very expensive project.
Over the last several months, we noticed that the windows in our kitchen were starting to get badly fogged aswell. The windows in the rest of the house were replaced by the previous owners, but the living room and kitchen windows were original to the house. The seals on the double-paned glass had given out, and moisture was gathering between the panes. It spoils the view and makes cleaning the windows a particularly un-rewarding task.
We decided to bite the bullet and get them replaced, but before we made arrangements to get new windows, we did a little searching around on Google. And we found that fogged double paned glass can be replaced without replacing the whole window. Jackpot!
Normally we’re big fans of do-it-yourself. But in this case, I’m glad we left the job to a professional. The window guy had all sorts of fancy tools and it still took him about six hours to replace five windows. Despite all his skill and tools, one of them broke as he was installing it, and he had to come back today to finish the job.
Our windows look fantastic now. We have clear views, no fog, and improved insulation values in our windows (apparently when the seal gives out on double paned glass, the R value drops). The grand total to have five double-paned windows installed was $624 (and they come with a ten year warranty against fogging). Compared with the cost of having five complete, custom-sized windows installed, we feel like we did pretty well. We’ve been talking about fixing our fogged windows for years, and it’s nice to finally have it done.
The Happy Rock says
Nice find on the google search. Gotta love the internet and saving large sums of money!