We are a homeowner building a new home. We wanted grills on our entire home and chose the style. The designer chose to only put the grills on the sides and front of our home with no grills on the back. This has created a problem in some of our rooms which have windows that face the sides and back of the house as we now have rooms with both grills/no grills in the same room. To a person who craves symmetry this is driving me nuts. The designer is telling us that if we change the windows in the back to have grills it will cost us a lot of money and will delay the home build for a month (our lease runs out when our home is to be completed so we don’t know where we would go). She stated that our window coverings will cover them up and we won’t be able to tell there’s any discrepancy. The grills on the house are colonial looking but only extend halfway down the window instead of all the way down. We don’t know what to do.
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I assume you're talking about "muntins". On virtually all modern windows these are "fakes", either placed between the layers of the double-glaze glass or glued onto the glass after the glass is set into the sash.
There are a number of after-market sources for the glue-on variety of muntins, and many install easily with double-stick tape.
Depending on the brand and style of windows, one might also be able to obtain replacement sashes with the muntins between the layers (at a likely cost of several hundred per sash).
What brand windows are they?
Did you guys specify grids on all windows or did you leave it up to her ( the designer) ? if you did not leave it up to her and you were clear about what you wanted then it shouldnt cost YOU a lot more, it should come out of the money you are paying her which means she would be making A LOT less money.
Apparently they left it up to the designer because that is what was ordered, genius. If the homeowner made it clear (this generally means in writing) what they wanted, then there wouldn't have been a need for an O.P. on this forum.
I imagine this issue can be resolved pretty easily. Almost every reptubale window supplier will require a sign off page to a window/door order that details everything about the order. The real question is who signed off on the order and did that individual have authority to do so?
BTW, gereally windows with upper grills only are considered Craftsman or Bungalow style.