keithfitz

I can tell you about my own experience with Restoration versus vinyl replacement.
In my own house I removed the old wood window sashes, Insulated with Weight pockets with Can Foam, and Installed Vinyl Replacements. The Vinyl Replacements cost me about $170 each and about an hour of labor for each window.
About a year or so later I did a full gut rehab on an old home for Clients that wanted the house to be as energy efficient as possible, but replacing the windows was an absolute non starter (especially with Vinyl). They were photographers and loved the old wavy glass. I was a little unsure of how it would work but I decided to repair and rehab all of the old sashes, jams and storm windows. I weatherstripped all of the windows with products from Resource conservation technology http://www.conservationtechnology.com/building.html based on an article I had read in either Fine Homebuilding or JLC (Sorry I like that mag too). I also removed the old weights, pulleys and ropes and installed Pullman window tensioners http://www.pullmanmfg.com/. The weight pockets were insulated with Can Foam. Once I did one or two of the windows and got an efficient workstation set up the work went pretty quickly. The cost of materials to retro fit the windows was about $50 per opening. It took me about 2 - 3 hours per opening Depending on how beat up the sash was (not including new window trim on the inside and repainting of sashes). After the whole project was complete we did a blower door test and because the whole house was insulated with closed cell spray foam I though that the windows would make or break the test. We ended up with 4.5 Air changes per hour as a pressure difference of 50 pascals. Our goal was 5 so I was very pleased with how the windows performed. I was also really happy with how great the old windows and storms look too. I kind of wish I has kept my old windows too.