The moment that you begin shopping for replacement windows or doors for your Martinez home, you will be faced with a number of decisions. Depending on what you focus on and how you approach this process, you could end up with windows that you are absolutely thrilled with or regrets only a few weeks or months down the road.
There are number of things that you should focus on when you first set out to shop for replacement windows. However, there is one thing that you should absolutely avoid during this process.
That is shopping based on price as your top priority. In other words, if you approach shopping for replacement windows like you would when you are shopping for a brand new appliance for your home, brand new TV, or other basic products, you will likely be making some serious mistakes in the process.
One thing is that you, like most other homeowners in Martinez, don’t want to be taken advantage of. You don’t want to spend more than you absolutely have to on any particular product or service. You are frugal to a point, but you also understand that quality is important. Maybe you have noticed that certain items that you can purchase at the store for much cheaper tend to be lower quality or are not brand name items that you recognize.
There are plenty of products that cost more than they should because of the manufacturer and the brand name. However, when it comes to replacement windows or replacement doors, there are some serious issues with regard to shopping based on price is your top priority.
Thanks to the Internet, you can find just about any type of product you want. You can purchase a car, a home, and just about anything else you want if you know where to look on the Internet. That puts you in touch with many different items and you compare them based on price, popularity, and reviews.
Many people shop at various online stores and they list the potential products they’re interested in based on a price schematic from low to high. That means the lowest priced items are going to be listed first and they would have to scroll through many pages of products to find higher priced, better quality products.
When you shop for replacement windows this way, you will generally find that there are a number of very inexpensive replacement windows and doors that you can choose from. This can get you focused on the wrong things right from the start.
When you shop based on finding the cheapest possible windows for your Martinez home, this is what is likely going to happen:
You go to the store where you found the lowest price on those replacement windows and you will be exposed to essentially a specific line of manufactured products. Some might be from a brand name that you recognize and when you see all these other windows to strategically placed in the building, they may appear as though they are of high quality.
A salesperson may pull out a book and show you a wide range of styles and designs or how those windows are going to look in your home and you may think that it looks great. At that point, because you have seen other small to midsized window and door companies in the area advertising their replacement windows or doors for twice the price, you just assume that the company you found can get these windows cheap because of their size and bargaining power.
That’s simply not the case. Pound for pound, quality window for quality window, you will find that most companies will charge about the same for the same size and style of window, regardless of how large, international, or local the company is.
What you are looking at when you go to these make a home improvement outlets is low quality, entry level windows that are popular among home builders. They are popular because they are so cheap. Homebuilders are not very interested in installing the highest quality windows or doors in the house. They are interested in maximizing the profit potential on that particular home.
You can purchase these windows and save a lot of money, feeling good about your decision when you head home, but after a couple of weeks once they are installed, you will begin to notice just how cheap and poorly made they are. There are going to be limitations with regard to energy efficiency and the hardware world will be low quality. You will also notice that many of the components, especially the sliding track catches and other hardware components in double hung windows can break easily. That can increase the overall cost of those windows when you constantly have to repair them.
Not only that, they won’t look as good as you might’ve thought they would considering all of the pictures and diagrams that you saw in that book that the salesman showed you.
The best way to avoid this common trap is to focus on looking at a wide range of different types, styles, sizes of windows as well as manufacturers. When you keep your options open from the beginning, you won’t be limited to only seeing one or two different types of windows. You will see how the quality of those cheap windows falls far short of those by more quality manufacturers.
This doesn’t mean that you have to spend a lot more money just to get a single window replaced in your home. You can certainly choose those low and, cheap windows if that is what you feel is best for your home. Just keep in mind that replacement windows and doors offer you one of the few opportunities when it comes to home improvement projects to increase the value of your house. It is an opportunity that generally comes along every 15 to 20 years, as that is life expectancy of new windows. Take advantage of the opportunity when you have it.
a-TaylorMade Window