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House & Yard

Live-Blogging from the Jobsite

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Well, K&J got the Simonton doors and window here in record time: we ordered them a week ago yesterday, and today Darin’s guys showed up to install them. Some difference between the Milgard dealer and Home Depot, each of whom said maybe they could get the product delivered in three weeks. Or so.

It’s quarter to one. They’ve been working since 7:30 this morning (and Charley the Golden Retriever has been locked in a bedroom, and Cassie the Corgi has yapped nonstop). And they’re still at it…about at the finishing-up stage, I think.

Retrofitting new doors and windows to fit openings that have been jury-rigged by previous owners is quite a trick. And this house has belonged to a seemingly endless stream of Happy Home Handymen.

The bedroom door, which I think was installed quite some time ago, went into a hole created by sawing out the wall below an old window. The H. H. Handyman then installed a (pretty nice-looking, I thought) stained wood frame around it, which covered a few minor sins.

This was the double-paned number that felt hot to the touch when the weather outside was fairly mild, in the 90s. Don’t even ask what it was like in true warm weather. It’s coming on to 102 degrees just now, and the new one, pictured here, actually feels cool when I put my hand on it!!

They didn’t have too much trouble getting the bedroom door in, or the back bedroom window, or the old Superlite aluminum cheapo installed back in 1971 by the builder. Wish the doors could just stay out and we could live like Tahitians, with the walls open to the ocean breezes. That craving passes, though, as the desert day grows warm.

Then…heh heh heh… They came to the door Satan installed when he (intelligently…) built his west-facing covered deck off the dining room. To create this opening, Satan started with a narrow, wide window the builder had set high in the wall, not quite a clerestory—a clunky style that was in fashion at the time. He sawed through the block wall on each side and then constructed some framing to accommodate a Home Depot special. He left a lot of air around the thing, interestingly. That one required quite a bit of effort and carpentry skill to replace. After spending a good amount of time wrestling with it, the men got that in place, too, and then built new framing around it.

Here’s how the new door looks from the outside…

…and here it is on the inside:

Now they need a little paint touch-up, which is fine: I’ve got a long list of honey-do’s for a good painter! Once he’s here, he can also take care of some of the other issues that need fixing. Depending on what he charges, maybe he can wangle a most-of-the-house repainting job, come to think of it.

I need to wash and rehang the curtains, but believe I’ll wait till it’s little cooler out in the Garage-O-Mat.

These windows actually are physically cool to the touch. It’s weird! Not only that, but they’re even marginally cooler than the Milgards that I installed in the place after I moved in. But that may be because the Milgards are on the north-facing wall. Still…no direct sunlight ever hits them. The REAL cool-to-the-touch test will come late this afternoon, when the setting sun manages to work a few beams in around the foliage on the west side. Satan’s door actually was pretty energy-efficient—the only older window in the house that even approached low-E. But it did warm up along about 5:00 p.m.

And so, this is The Fat Lady, signing off from the Funny Farm in lovely uptown Phoenix, Arizona. Be glad you’re not here, and be especially glad you’re not a tradesman in this place!

the-sun

Live-Blogging from Hell

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Mwa ha ha!  You’ll recall I thought it was a lovely day this morning? Even vacation-like? Well, when you think about it, nano- means very, very, excessively extremely small. That does describe the extent of today’s minivacation.

Before long I get around to loading the sheets in the washer. Check one item off the list.

Next quickie project is to water the potted plants outside, which fortunately are fairly close to the side door to the garage, where the washer & dryer reside. I reach over to turn off the spigot and hear this husky “drip-drip-drip” and by golly it’s coming from inside the garage.

The garage sink, into which the washer drains, is COMPLETELY PLOGGED UP and water is now pouring onto the floor.

Shut off the spin cycle. Get the plunger. Plunge and plunge and plunge and plunge and plunge and plunge to no avail.

Call the plumber. He’ll come over sometime this afternoon.

Try to mop the water up off the floor. Lost cause. Open the garage door, move the car outside, get the wide broom, sweep puddles of water out onto the driveway.

The washer is now full of soapy sheets and white underwear. Pour cold water into the bathtub. Haul out the undies, wring as much soapy water out as my ancient hands will permit. Rinse them out in the tubful of water, wring, hang on plastic hangers to dry. Decide I’d just as soon not leave the sheets sitting the the washer all day. Remember how  my mother and I used to have to rinse all the clothes and linens, including my father’s enormously heavy khakis, in the big utility sink in the service porch, then drag them out to the backyard and hang them up on the clotheslines. If a shamal (a sandstorm) came rolling in from the desert or a rain squall washed ashore from the Persian Gulf, we would have to run to grab the clothes off the line before the flying dirt or water hit.

Those were the good old days. Not.

Funny. The plumbing never seemed to back up in those halcyon times.

Haul the sheets into the bathroom, rinse them in the tub, wring them as best as I can, drop them back in the bucket, haul them to the backyard and hang them on the makeshift clotheslines out there.

Hm. Walking through the kitchen, I notice that the kitchen sink is backed up, too. Call the plumber to report this, so he’ll know what he’s contending with. He says that means the kitchen line we thought we’d unplugged a few days didn’t really get unplugged. He’s armed with all his machinery.

It’ll be a while. The really BIG thing I needed to do today was to file The Copyeditor’s Desk’s annual report with the Corporation Commission. I’m late, and probably accruing late fees as the days pass. But it’s easy: get online, enter the corporation’s registration number, update a form, fork over about a hundred bucks, and click “done.”

Sounds easy, anyway.

But….

I get up to retrieve my wallet, wherein resides the corporate credit card.

It’s not in my purse.

It’s not in my class junk bag.

It’s not in the car.

IT. IS. FUCKIN’. GONE!!!!!!!

I can’t find my wallet anywhere. Nowhere. Anyplace. Noplace!!!!!!!

Maybe I left it at the window & door guy’s shop when I took out a credit card to pay him. Of course, they’re “family oriented” and close over the weekend. No one there.

Okay. So…can I find the credit card number and just enter the damn thing at the Corporation Commission’s site? It means taking a chance that someone is madly charging up truck tires and boom boxes on that card, but hey. All I have to do is say I didn’t realize it was gone when I was submitting forms online.

Well. No. I can’t find the credit card number. My file folder full of statements is over at the accountant’s. Fortunately she lives across the street. She comes over with the statements, and with advice:

CALL. AMERICAN. EXPRESS. NOW. NOT. LATER!

And while you’re at it, call the Mastercard vendor, too. Do not even THINK of waiting until Monday when you can get the window dude on the phone!

Oshitodamnohell…

BUSINESS OWNER: Okay, but how’s about I post the annual report first?

ACCOUNTANT: You could probably get away with that.

Welp, we find the full account number in a piece of correspondence AMEX sent at the time I opened the account (otherwise, they show only the last four digits on their statements).

So I sit down to do the annual report and…that’s when I realize I don’t know when the card expires.

Rifle through all the papers and receipts in the files: no clue.

Damn.

So, get on the phone to AMEX and Mastercard to report missing-or-stolen card. They cancel the accounts and say they will reissue new cards. While chatting with the AMEX CSR, realize that holy god! My flicking Medicare card was in that wallet, and Medicare kindly stamps your goddam SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER on the card and then demands that you carry it everywhere with you! Have a near melt-down on the phone.

Moving on… Transfer the amount of down payment for the windows from savings over to checking and use that to pay the balance on the Mastercard, with which I paid the window guy.

After all these tergiversations, I remember—a day late and a dollar short—that at one point along the line I photocopied the contents of that wallet. Dig this out, and yes, it shows the Medicare card, a Mastercard, two AMEX cards, a driver’s license… Hmmm….Apparently I also had a J.Jill card in there.

Can’t get a human being at J.Jill, only the MOST infuriating robo-answerer in creation. Only option there is to cancel the card altogether. Good. Less opportunity to charge stuff up.

Now I am without a charge card. And I charge everything. I do not carry cash. I buy gas at Costco, and you have to use your AMEX card to buy gas there, unless you go inside and buy a cash card (which I’ll have to do tomorrow, with a check, since I have to drive from proverbial pillar to annoying post next week).

The plumber shows up. “This looks bad,” says he.

He breaks out his rotorooter tool and climbs on the roof. As I write this, it is 109 degrees in the shade of the back porch. You don’t even want to think about what the temperature is like in the full glare of the sun atop a dark roof.

In the presence of another human being, my hysteria abates from its high pitch. A vague memory arises: didn’t I read some PF blogger’s advice somewhere that a person should take her Medicare card out of her wallet and stash it someplace in the house? And didn’t I…did I?…act on that?

Dredge through a file drawer to find the hanging folder for Medicare, and therein find a file labeled À la carte. And hot dang! There’s the damnfool Medicare card!

Somewhere along the line, for one brief shining moment, I experienced a flicker of common sense. A miracle!!!! Whoever has my wallet does not have my Social Security number.

What. a. freaking. nightmare.

…..oh, but it gets better….

[PLUMBER walks into kitchen and runs water in the sink]

HOMEOWNER: Hm. Looks like it’s running.

PLUMBER: Actually not. It’s plugged up solid.

HOMEOWNER: Get the jackhammer.

PLUMBER: That’s what I’m doin’!

I think he’s joking. I hope.

PLUMBER goes back on the roof, having asked me to stand next to the sink and watch what happens. Spends another ten minutes laboring with the drain snake.

He comes down and opines that the drain is now clear.

I remark that I can’t recall blocked pipes when I was a little kid.

“Well, people didn’t rely on the plumbing as much then. We didn’t have dishwashers, and a lot of people didn’t even have washers in their homes.”

Right. And when water came out of a faucet, enough came out to matter…

Moving on, he notices a gallon of vinegar sitting on the garage table—I use it in the dishwasher. He says, “If we could pour a gallon of that down the drain, it would be good.”

I say, “How about ammonia?”

Says he, “That would be even better.”

I haul out a half-gallon bottle of ammonia. “Pour it all down the kitchen sink,” he says. “And use some of it to clean the sink!”

I put on a pair of rubber gloves and proceed as directed. We let the ammonia sit there for ten or twenty minutes. Then fill the sinks—what with the hateful low-flow kitchen faucet, it takes another ten or twenty minutes to fill the kitchen sinks. I ask if it would be possible to get one of those plastic faucets, like the one on the utility sink, that actually works and put it on the kitchen sink. He thinks (erroneously) that I’m kidding.

It’s 3:03 p.m. I have not done the annual report (nor will I, now, until Tuesday or Wednesday), I have not picked up the piles of paper off my desk, I have not read the rest of the client’s MS, I have not read any part of the ARC awaiting attention, I have not printed out the stuff about the windows and filed them, I have not gone to Costco (nor can I, until new credit cards come in), I have not graded student papers, I have not cleaned the floors or dusted, I have not washed the windows. I have not scanned and deposited the most recent check from Google Adsense. My hands are burning from scrubbing sinks and sink grids with Barkeeper’s Friend. It is hotter than Hell in here. I am going to bed, perhaps never to arise.

With any luck.

 

 

The Workman Waltz: Angie’s Dance

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So yesterday a guy who’s ecstatically recommended on Angie’s List came over to measure and give me an estimate on installing the three proposed sliding doors. And as experiences go, this one took the cake. It may be one of the most amazing episodes of the Workman Waltz to date. 😀

First off, he didn’t even want to be bothered with measuring…said he’d been in business long enough to know what the dimensions of sliding doors are. He just wanted to cut a deal.

When I insisted that he look at the door in the back bedroom because a previous owner built a wood frame around it, he was surprised to find it’s a different size from the other two doors (which themselves are not the same size, though at a glance they look like they are). He said it’s a nonstandard size. Then he opined that the original opening had been built for hinged French doors. Wrong on both counts: the original opening is the width and height it is because a happy handyman simply took out the window, cut the wall opening down to the floor, and framed the resulting opening to fit a standard small Home Depot sliding door.

Oozing into a chair at the dining-room table, he next tried to sell me a used door. His company just moved to new digs, and they removed doors they’d put into the place they were renting. So wouldn’t I like a FANTASTIC deal on a 13-year-old sliding door! No warranty of course.

Moving on, I asked what he does about lead abatement, something I learned about from the K&J Windows and Doors guy. As it develops, if a house was built before 1978, the federal government requires contractors who do any kind of renovation or replacement to test for lead paint and, if they find it, to jump through some nuisancey and expensive hoops. For example, K&J charges $100 for the lead test and $150 per window or door for the extra work that has to be done.

He now says he will not do an installation if there’s lead, because it’s too much hassle and the rule is too oppressive: the fine for getting it wrong is $37,500 and possible jail time. So, says he, the way to deal with this is I’ll give him a letter stating that I know the house has no lead in it. Then he’ll have his crew install the windows without screwing around with the lead abatement safety procedures.

“Well, I don’t know that,” I say. “The house hasn’t been tested.”

He says that doesn’t matter—just give him a letter warrantying that the house is free of lead and don’t worry about it.

In other words, instead of him paying $37,500 and going to jail, I can do it.

I say, according to the figures the EPA has published on the Internet, a house built in 1971 (the year mine was built) has a 24% chance of having lead paint.

He scoffs. “You can find anything on the Internet,” says he. That figure is wrong, he says: “I took the lead certification course, and I can tell you the chances of this house having lead paint are almost nil. Just give me the letter and we’ll install the windows.” I let this line of conversation drop, having found the figures from a chart published at the EPA’s website and recognizing a bald-faced lie when I hear it.

Now he demands to know how much others have bid. He emits an offer that underbids K&J, proposing not to install the Milgard or Simonton windows I’ve researched and specifically asked for but to substitute an off-brand. Then he says he’ll give me this SMOKIN’ deal only if I sign with him right that instant.

I say I have another contractor coming over to give me another bid, and I will decide which company to go with after I’ve gathered all the bids.

He now tries to high-pressure me, saying it’s pointless to get any other bids and that I’m being silly to ask for several estimates.

I say I’m not going to be pushed into signing a contract until I have all the bids I want.

He says unless I sign with him RIGHT THEN AND THERE, he won’t do business with me.

I say fine, good-bye.

He leaves, but drops his card on the table and tells me to call him if I change my mind.

Man! That was an experience.

The K&J guys are coming over this morning. So far, their bid, based on Freelite’s measurements, is a LOT less than Freelite’s. However, when I looked closely at their bid, I saw it did not itemize the 6.04% tax by each door, as Chip the Freelite owner had done in his bid. So I had to try to figure the tax on each piece, by way of deciding whether to buy all three or only two. But even with that added, they’re $1,461 less if I buy two narrow-rail doors and $1,835 if I buy three. That’s including K&J’s $150/window lead abatement charges, about which Chip said nothing. Yesterday I e-mailed Chip to ask if his bid includes the lead thing, but he hasn’t replied.

Calculating the tax is complex because it may apply to some things and not to others, and so I won’t know for sure what K&J’s bid will be until I’ve talked with an installer and asked him to provide the real, actual, final bottom line.

Freelight did nothing in the lead department when they installed the skylights and front windows several years ago, and I have yet to keel over dead. But that was before 2010, when this regulation went into force. So if there is lead in the house (which, this being Arizona, we can assume is the case), I was exposed to clouds of lead-laden dust. At the outset, the rule was supposed to allow a waiver for homes where no children and no pregnant women live; however, the EPA threw that proposal out before the law took effect.

If the required test reveals lead in the house, the hoops they have to jump through are quite dramatic. All the occupants have to leave the house and stay out until the job and the cleanup are done. They have to tape off your house with yellow hazard tape and put up those orange cones to keep people out. They have to seal off the work space by taping plastic all around each window, and the workmen have to wear protective gear (in 112-degree heat!). So as you can imagine, if there’s lead in the house, it’s unlikely the job is going to get done this summer.

Or at all…I’m inclined to skip the whole project, if that amount of hassle is entailed.

An option is to find out if there’s lead in the house and then just not do the work. However, it’s better not to know. If you do know, when you go to sell the house you’re required to disclose the presence of old lead paint, even though it represents exactly zero hazard if it’s been covered with latex paint and is not chipped or peeling.

Anyway, the crook described above has rave reviews at Angie’s List. He probably put people up to joining and entering cheery reports, no doubt by giving them even deeper discounts on the junk brands he’s peddling. I’m tempted to describe this story at Angie’s List, but if he gets nailed for violating the federal law, he’d probably hire Guido from Chicago to come do some serious damage to my house or me.

Image: Renoir, Bal à Bougival. Public domain.

Best $20 I Ever Spent?

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So the plumber came over on Monday to deal with the Memorial Day Weekend Fiasco. By the time he got here, the drain was running again, albeit slowly. He said that often the weight of water sitting in the sink will push a clog through; that was probably what happened. He applied some Magical Crystals, which fizzed their way through the drain and forthwith, presto-changeo! The drain was running just fine.

Asked what I owed him, figuring it would be about $65.

“Oh,” says he, “how about enough to cover my gas?”

So I gave him twenty bucks.

While he was here, we got to chatting about the late, great SWAT team adventure and I remarked as to how I wanted to change out all the sliding doors to get something more secure, because two of them don’t even latch.

He looked at me kinda funny and said, “Why would you do that? You’re already doing the best thing you can do to secure a sliding door: dropping a stick or metal bar in the slider groove.

“Doesn’t matter how good the door’s latch is. To get in, all you’ve got to do is take a rock or a hammer, break the glass, and open the door.”

Hm.

Well, one of the doors is extremely not low-E. Even on a reasonably mild day and even though no direct sunlight ever hits that door, the ambient temperature outdoors will make the glass feel warm to the touch. Explains a lot about why the bedroom is hotter than a two-dollar cookstove by about 4:00 p.m.

And the one that came with the house has a pane of something that doesn’t even seem to be glass. Plastic? Did Superlite make sliding tinfoil doors with plastic panes???? It’s cheesy and it looks cheesy and its decrepit and I’d really like to be rid of it.

The third, in the dining room, does possess a functioning latch. Though it’s not my favorite color or style, its glass doesn’t get especially hot in the summer and it works just fine. Sooooo….

Why am I doing this?

Why, instead of replacing all three doors with expensive fancy white wide-rail vinyl sliders, why not keep the narrow, dark-framed dining-room sliding door and then…and then and then…

Get two narrow-rail Simonton doors, which not only happen to be cheaper and better reviewed than Milgard but which also come in a wider range of colors. Order them in “bronze” on the outside to match the existing dining-room door and “tan,” which is the darkest interior color. This would come close enough in appearance to the existing door as to not be too annoying, I’d get low-E doors with the best cheesy latches available on any sliding door product, and it would cost ONE. hell. of. a. lot. less.

For the saving, I’ll bet I can replace that last bedroom window and still come out ahead. Or at least have enough to hire a painter to spiff up the interior.

That twenty bucks on the unnecessary plumber’s trip was probably the best twenty dollah I ever spent!

The Wages of Comparison Shopping

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Well, this gets more and more interesting.

The outfit to whom I sent the sliding door measurements returned a bid yesterday. And they revealed something that none of the other contractors, Home Depot included, bothered to mention:

Starting in 2008, the government began requiring window installers to test any house built before 1978 for lead. My house, of course, was built in ’71. If they find lead paint, they have to jump through an elaborate set of hoops to “contain” lead dust during their installation, which can involve draping all the shrubs and trees with plastic (you realize how tall a mature tree gets???), setting out orange cones and taping off your home (wait’ll the neighbors see that), keeping the homeowners out of the dwelling until the work is done and cleaned up, and on and on. Penalty for evading this hassle is $32,400 per violation, with potential jail time.

All these shenanigans add to the cost of an already expensive procedure. Changing out a window is not cheap to begin with, and the contractor in question adds $150 to the cost of the job if your house tests positive.

Not one of the three other people I’ve spoken with even mentioned this in passing.

And of course, if your house tests positive for lead—which mine certainly could, this being the Wild West where people don’t give a damn about safe anything, especially if warnings come from the hated government—then you’re required to disclose that when you go to sell. If you have to tell a buyer that your house has a coat of lead paint under all those pretty latex colors, then you’re going to be SOL when it comes to unloading the place.

A house built in 1971 has a 24 percent chance of testing positive.

So. It may be better to leave bad enough alone. Obviously, you don’t have to disclose what you don’t know.

Another option would be to tell them to go ahead and do the lead containment procedure without testing. In that event, you still don’t know one way or another…but it costs you an additional $50 per window. Or more.

About the cost of the proposed new sliding doors, yesterday’s conversation added more to that complicated discovery process:

If the house does not test positive, and if by way of cutting corners I opt the windows and get the attractive wide rails on only two of the three needed sliding doors, then comparing apples to apples, Freelite comes in $800 higher than this new outfit, K&J, for Milgard windows.

Home Depot and Home Depot Direct did not give me estimates for the wide-rail style, despite my having told them specifically that’s what I wanted. K&J’s estimate for two wide-rail and one narrow-rail Milgard is about $600 higher than Home Depot’s bid for three narrow-rail Milgards.

K&J also can install Simonton doors and windows, which apparently are better regarded by builders than other brands in this price range. Here, the only other direct comparison is with HD Direct, which bid only for narrow-rail Simontons. With two wide-rail doors and one narrow-rail, K&J comes in only $256 more than HD Direct.

If the house tests positive for lead, you can add $150 to K&J’s bid. But even then, K&J comes in significantly below Freelite’s bid for Milgard, a more expensive door with a lesser warranty than Simonton.

It’s entirely possible that HD, HD Direct, and Freelite simply include the cost of testing and lead abatement in their figures. But it seems kind of odd that none of them mentioned it. On the one hand, if you don’t know the results, it means you don’t have to say anything to potential home buyers. But on the other…one wonders if the federal law doesn’t require disclosure to the homeowner.

LOL! Speaking of dissembling, the contractor for Costco got back on the phone yesterday and asked if he could come over, eyeball the windows, and give me a bid. I agreed to let him do that…and then remarked that HD wanted to sell me Simonton for the windows and Milgard for the doors.

He now says—get this!—that Home Depot owns Simonton. This is why, he says, they have a vested interest in getting you to buy Simonton windows.

That, as it develops, is not true. Simonton is owned by Simonton. The particular line HD Direct sells, called VantagePointe, is manufactured exclusively for Home Depot, but that does not mean Home Depot owns the entire company.

So I canceled that guy. Let’s hope he doesn’t show up anyway.

Well, we’re now at the start of a three-day weekend, so presumably I won’t hear anything from any of these bozos before Tuesday. Entertaining, isn’t it? Gets better and better.

The Workman Waltz

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Ugh. How I hate dealing with contractors and workmen and vendors. Over the past week, I’ve checked around with various Milgard vendors and discovered the following:

 1) Home Depot has a deal with Milgard—HD staff thinks their beloved employer is Milgard’s exclusive big-box vendor in Arizona. They’re wrong.

2) Costco is selling the same model of Milgard (Tuscany 8621T) and underpricing Home Depot.

3) Home Depot Direct, a branch of HD that tries to upsell customers by coming to the home and delivering a pitch, is peddling windows by Simonton that have various blandishments built-in, some of which appear to improve on the Milgard product. In 2009, Simonton Windows were rated #1 in a JD Powers study, but builders themselves seem ambivalent—some commenters on an National Association of Home Builders site seem to think they’re just OK; others say they have the best warranty and customer service. Milgard has racked up a ton of consumer complaints around the Web, but at the NAHB site, contractors in general like Milgard but warn that the company does not warranty glass breakage and the rollers are not very good. Home Depot is almost universally reviled, and some commenters urge purchasing Simonton from other, local dealers.

 On the doors alone, Home Depot is underbidding the excellent and beloved Freelite (for example: for the net 71.5″ x 79.5″ slider, Freelite’s price is $1132 and HD’s is $983), and Costco is underbidding Home Depot ($966 for the same door). Home Depot charges $399 for installation, but if you’re buying more than one unit, they drop the cost to $218 for the subsequent installations (made in one purchase, that is)—so they’re trouncing Freelite, with its $450 installation/unit figure.

However, often one gets what one pays for.

Costco’s installer came across as a raving flake, and so I’m afraid I didn’t get so far as to ask about installation cost—I was too busy running in the other direction.

HD’s in-store salesman gave me bids (not including installation, which I had to find out about and calculate on my own, with who knows how much accuracy) for the sliding doors, but told me that to get the windows I’d have to have a guy come to my home and give me a pitch. This turned out to be a visit from Home Depot Direct, whose rep occupied over an hour of my time trying to sell me the Simonton doors. The (approximate) results:

It appears that Simonton windows are similar in quality to Milgard’s, but Simonton has a uniquely amazing warranty. On the other hand, I’ve had no complaints about the Milgard windows that Freelite installed in the house back in the day when I had an actual income. Au contraire: in response to what seemed to me to be a minor issue, Freelite’s guys descended on the offending window, removed it from the frame, and reinstalled it to meet their exacting standards. No problem of any sort has ever ensued. They did an excellent job not only on installing the windows, but also in installing four skylights. Real skylights, not those tube things.

So as you can imagine, I’m inclined to go with Freelite. Only problem is…I can’t afford Freelite.

The Simonton windows may be slightly better than the Milgard that Freelite sells. However, there is NO chance I’m buying them from Home Depot. Why?

a) I do not like being upsold, nor do I appreciate being put in a position where some guy comes to my house and hustles me to buy something that is different from what I specifically said I want to buy; and

b) Home Depot contracts out installation. You have no choice about who shows up at your house to put this stuff in. It is, in a word, a pig in a poke. In my experience, HD’s service is mixed—sometimes just fine, sometimes not altogether fine. So if I can find a company that sells the same product but is an actual vendor and installer unto itself, well, then…if they’ve been in business more than ten days and twenty minutes, I incline to give them a chance.

I really want the wide (“French”) rails at least on the two doors in the family/dining room. To cut corners, I could get away with the standard tract-house “narrow” rails for the door in the bedroom.

This afternoon it was over to Angie’s List, where I found one outfit not far from my house—they’re to send an estimate whenever they get around it, based on Freelite’s measurements. Then it was on to the enthusiastically reviewed Wholesale Window and Doors, not far from here at-tall. Get them on the phone: “Can I call you back. We’re in the process of moving our office and…” If you’ve ever moved an office, you know what this poor soul is going through. She: to call me back tomorrow. Angie’s list customers adore, worship, and sanctify Wholesale Window and Doors. Wholesale carries Milgard. So…let’s see what, if anything, they can do.

The Workman Waltz goes on…