Window and door repair in Acworth, Georgia
Acworth has two housing stories, and they could hardly be further apart. One is a railroad town of the 1840s that was burned in 1864. The other is the subdivision boom that turned a town of 4,519 people in 1990 into one of 13,422 in 2000 and 22,440 by 2020. Census Bureau estimates put about six in ten Acworth homes in the twenty years from 1990 to 2009, with the median home built in 2000.
That second group is the one we see most. Those houses are now somewhere between fifteen and thirty-five years old, which is the age at which the windows and doors fitted by the original builder start to tell you about it. We work out of our shop in Marietta, and Acworth is a short way up the road from it.
What goes wrong in an Acworth house built in the 1990s and 2000s
Very rarely the whole window. Nearly always one part of it.
Fogged insulated glass. A double-pane unit is two sheets of glass held apart by a spacer and sealed around the edge. Georgia summers cook that seal from the outside while the air conditioning cools it from the inside, day after day, and eventually it lets go. Moist air gets between the panes and you see a haze or white streaking you cannot clean off from either side. The sash and frame are usually fine. We replace the glass unit, not the window. Our foggy glass page explains how.
Worn balances and broken hardware. In the double-hung windows that most of these subdivisions were built with, the balances that hold the sash up wear out, and the window either slams or creeps down. Locks and tilt latches break. These are parts, and parts can be replaced. See window hardware repair.
Rot in wood and clad windows. Where a builder used wood windows, the bottom rail of the sash and the sill take the most water, and Acworth gets plenty of it. Caught while it is still soft wood and not a hole, rot is a repair. Our wood rot repair page covers what we cut out and what we save.
Tired entry and patio doors. Doors from the same era sag on their hinges, lose their weatherstrip, or fog in the glass panel the same way a window does. Most of that is door repair or door glass repair, not a new door.
The older Acworth
The Western and Atlantic Railroad was completed through here in 1840, the town took its name in 1843 from the New Hampshire hometown of railroad engineer Joseph L. Gregg, and it was incorporated in 1860. On November 13, 1864, Sherman’s army burned it, sparing twelve homes and one church.
Some of what survived, and much of what was built in the decades after, is still standing near the tracks. The Lemon House on Willis Street dates to 1856 and was spared when the town burned. The McEver House on North Main Street dates to the 1840s and was used as a Union field hospital. Along Dallas Street and the Collins Avenue Historic District there are houses running from around 1840 into the 1920s, and the commercial core was listed on the National Register as the Acworth Downtown Historic District in 2006.
Houses like these are the ones we would least like to see stripped of their original windows. Old wood sash is usually far better timber than anything you can buy now, and once the glazing, joints and hardware are put right it will outlast a replacement. Our window restoration page goes into detail.
Repair or replace
We install new windows and doors, and sometimes that is the right answer: a frame rotted past saving, or a window so cheaply made that repairing it is money thrown after money. We will tell you when that is the case.
What we will not do is recommend replacing a sound window because its glass fogged or a balance broke. If you want to think it through before anyone visits, try our repair or replace quiz or read how we make the call.
What a visit looks like
One of our people comes to the house and looks at the windows and doors you are worried about, and at anything else they notice on the way in. You get a written estimate that says which items need doing now and which can wait. The visit is free.
Glass and hardware jobs are usually measured on the first visit and installed on the second. Sash that needs restoration comes back to our Marietta shop, and the openings are closed up and weathertight until it comes home.
Nearby
From Acworth we also work in Kennesaw, Woodstock and Powder Springs, and of course in Marietta, where our shop is.
