Window and door repair in Dunwoody, Georgia
Dunwoody is a 1970s suburb with a much older name. The area was settled in the early 1830s and takes its name from Major Charles Dunwody, with the extra “o” owed to a misspelling on a banking note. From 1881 to 1921 the Roswell Railroad ran through along what is now Chamblee-Dunwoody Road. But Dunwoody stayed farmland until the 1960s, when subdivisions such as Georgetown began to go in, and it did not become a city until December 1, 2008.
What happened in between defines the houses. Perimeter Mall was developed in 1971 on land sold by the Spruill family, Dunwoody Village was completed the same year in its Colonial Williamsburg style, and the neighborhoods filled in around them. More than a quarter of the homes in Dunwoody today were built in the 1970s alone, and about four in ten were built between 1960 and 1979. That puts a large share of the city’s houses at around fifty years old, with a good many of them still wearing some of their original windows and doors.
We work out of our shop in Marietta and cover Dunwoody along with the rest of the Perimeter area.
Fifty-year-old windows
A window that has lasted half a century in Atlanta’s heat and humidity has earned some wear. The question is which kind, because the answer decides whether you are looking at a repair or a replacement.
Original wood windows. Houses of this era were commonly built with wood double-hung windows, and the colonial styles often called for divided lites. Where they survive, the timber is usually better than what is milled today. The common problems are paint-sealed sashes, failed glazing, loose joints and rot at the bottom rail and sill. Those are repairs, and our window restoration and wood rot repair pages explain them.
Second-generation windows that are now old themselves. Plenty of houses this age had their originals replaced in the 1990s or 2000s. Those replacements are now twenty or thirty years old, and their insulated glass is fogging and their balances are wearing out. A fogged pane in a sound frame needs new glass, not a new window; see foggy glass. Sashes that will not stay up need new balances; see window hardware repair.
Weatherstrip and draft. The draft that prompts a lot of calls in older houses is often perished weatherstripping or a sash that no longer closes tight, not a failed window. It is a cheap fix and worth ruling out before anyone talks about replacement.
Doors on a colonial
The formal front entries of the period, often with sidelights and a transom, take a lot of weather. The base of the jamb and the brickmould rot where rain splashes back, the threshold works loose, and the sidelight glass fogs. Most of that is door repair and door glass repair, and it keeps the original entry intact. Where the door or frame is beyond saving, we do door replacement, and we try to match the style of the house.
Repair or replace in a 1970s house
Many window companies sell only replacements. We do both, so we can tell you honestly which one each window needs.
Sound original wood windows are usually worth restoring. Sound replacement windows with a failed part are worth repairing. Windows whose frames have rotted through, or cheap units that have warped and no longer seal, are worth replacing, and in that case window replacement is what we will recommend. We make the call window by window rather than whole-house by default. If you want to think it through first, try our repair or replace guide or the repair-or-replace quiz.
About a third of Dunwoody’s homes are in buildings of twenty or more units, and others are townhomes. If you own one, check with your association before commissioning work on windows or exterior doors, since responsibility and approved products vary.
What a visit looks like
Someone comes out, looks at every window and door you are concerned about, and tells you which need work and which do not. You get a written estimate that separates what is urgent from what can wait a season. There is no charge for the visit.
Glass and hardware are usually measured on the first visit and fitted on the second. Sash restoration happens in our Marietta shop, and your openings are closed up and weathertight while the sashes are with us.
Nearby
From Dunwoody we also cover Sandy Springs, Roswell, Johns Creek, Alpharetta, Buckhead and Decatur, as well as Marietta, where our shop is.
