My lack of a regular schedule has me up late at night. It was about 12:30, the Golden Girls were on the Hallmark channel, when I heard an ad come on the TV. Renewal by Andersen was having a 2 for 1 sale so I wrote down the number and called them the next day. Andersen made my 8 foot patio doors, transoms and casement windows when I ripped out the back of the house and I could not be happier with them. I made an appointment for a salesperson to come over and take a look at replacing the windows.
Two days later, Scott, from Andersen's local rep Huff and Puff (get it?) out of Schenectady, NY came by the church to get the lay of the land. "Hmmm, these are some big windows" he says as he walks through the house. "Yep" I replied. We sat down and he explained the process of window replacement. From the the moment I sign on the dotted line it would take somewhere between 4 and 6 weeks (Andersen has been making their windows in their Minnesota factory for over 100 years) with installation. He could send his installer to take final measurements and survey the job as early as next week. "So, if we do this today, I can have new windows before Thanksgiving?" He nodded and then brought in the sample window: tempered E4 glass, wood interior grills, vinyl coated exterior frame, window locks, tilt in function to clean them, gorgeous engineering where the window just glides up and down, no need for storms and easy to remove and install screens. I was in love. "So you can make them look just like what I have now? With the mullions and all?" His turn to say "Yep." "Ok, let's do this. Get out the calculator and give me the number." "This will make a huge difference in your heating bills, and my guys would really enjoy doing a job like this." I held my breath. "Um, you know that the 2 for 1 deal won't apply to this... that's for standard stock windows and these, obviously, are not. But I can apply our other promotion, 20% off, to your order." "Lay it on me, Scott" He gently pushed the paper over to me with the number. Well, it wasn't heart stopping but deep breaths were in order. Replacing nine windows that are nearly 3 1/2 feet by 7 feet ain't cheap, but you guessed that already. I signed. I had to. If you read this blog from the beginning, you know what I went through to bring natural gas into the church from the street and install a state of the art, efficient heating system to go with it. It was all blowing out those beautiful ancient windows in the winter. I had to bite the bullet. I wrote the check for 50% of the job and handed it to him.
On Monday, Adam the installer came by the church to take the final measurements. "Hmmmm, these are some big windows" he says as he walks through the house. "Yep" I replied. "This is a cool place, this would be a cool job" he tells me. That always makes me happy. We shake hands when he is done and he tells me he'll give me two weeks notice so I can clear the window areas and prepare the room for installation. I give him a thumbs up as he hops into his truck.
And on another "fall is here, winter is coming" note, this happened today.
