tjh1

It's interesting to read all the debate on this forum related to old houses. I live in the SF Bay area in a suburb. All the tract homes built from about 1970 through the mid-80s, mine included have alum frame sliders. Most tract homes from this era have stucco siding with no trim around the outside of the window frame.

Through hard sell and silliness, vinyl retrofit windows as well as roll up, raised panel steel garage doors have taken over almost every large fenestration on these tract homes, including the 30 year old tract I live in.

I'm all for energy efficiency but........

No one is going to recoup the $6 to $8 thousand per house they've paid for replacement vinyl windows in energy savings or on resale contrary to what some shyster sales rep told them. Even if the windows saved $50/month in heating and cooling costs; well, you do the math. And, a house with retrofit windows compared the same house without might have an extra selling feature but, who is going to pay a few thousand more based on the windows? Actually, I had kind of hoped the housing melt down had convinced people to stop worrying about resale value and start seeing it as a roof over their heads and treat it appropriately.

If I see on more "glow in the dark white" vinyl window replacement with the 2" wide, white vinyl flanges covering the siding around the window complimented by the raised panel, roll up, "glow in the dark white" steel garage door on a Mediterranean/spanish colonial style house I'm going to loose my lunch! Or dinner. The effect is really significant on a moonlit night. My entire neighborhood was overtaken with this craze during a three year period. It's worse than green shag carpeting and we all have to look at it.

You see these retrofits all over the Bay Area suburbs and it is really sad. There are just times when aesthetics outweigh function, even energy saving function.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and I only wish I had one to attach here. It would seem that many of you would nod in agreement.