Window and door repair in Roswell, Georgia
Roswell is two towns in one. The first is the mill town that grew up around Roswell King’s mills on Vickery Creek: the Roswell Manufacturing Company was incorporated in 1839, the town in 1854, and Bulloch Hall and Barrington Hall both went up in 1839. The second is the suburb that arrived all at once. Roswell had 5,430 residents in 1970, 23,337 in 1980 and 47,923 by 1990, and the housing record shows it. About a third of the homes standing in Roswell today were built in the 1980s, and close to half were built between 1970 and 1989.
Those 1980s houses are now around forty years old, and their windows and doors are where it shows first. We work out of our shop in Marietta, just across the county line.
What fails in a forty-year-old Roswell house
Very rarely the whole window. Usually one part of it, and knowing which part is what keeps the bill sensible.
Rot at the bottom of the sash. Many houses of this era were built with wood windows, and wood sitting in Atlanta humidity for four decades will find every failed paint line and open glazing joint. Water collects on the bottom rail and the sill, the paint holds it in, and the wood softens from underneath. Caught before it spreads into the frame, it is a wood rot repair: the soft section is cut out and replaced with sound timber, and the window keeps working.
Fogged glass in the replacements. Plenty of Roswell homeowners already replaced their original windows once, in the late 1990s or 2000s. The insulated glass in those units has its own lifespan, and a good number are now past it. Moisture gets between the panes and leaves a haze you cannot clean from either side. If the frame is sound, we replace the glass unit and nothing else. See our foggy glass page for how that works.
Worn balances and hardware. Double-hungs that will not stay up, casements that crank but do not close tight, locks that no longer pull the sashes together. These are parts, and parts can be replaced. Our window hardware repair page covers the common ones.
Doors that have been rained on for forty years. Exterior doors on 1980s houses tend to fail at the bottom: the base of the jamb and the brickmould rot where splashback hits them, the threshold loosens, and the door starts to drag. Sidelight glass fogs the same way window glass does. Most of that is door repair or door glass repair, not a new door.
Repair or replace, honestly
Many of the companies that work Roswell sell replacement windows, so that is what they recommend. We do both, which means we can afford to tell you which one your house actually needs.
If the frame is solid and only the glass has fogged, replace the glass. If the hardware has worn out, replace the hardware. If a sash has rot in one corner, repair the corner.
If the frame has rotted through, or the window was a poor one to begin with and the repairs would cost most of what a new unit costs, then window replacement is the honest answer and we will tell you so. If you want to work through it yourself first, our repair or replace guide and the short repair-or-replace quiz walk through the same questions we ask on site.
The historic district
The Roswell Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 2, 1974. It takes in Bulloch Hall and Barrington Hall, both Greek Revival houses, and the Old Bricks, which were built as housing for the mill workers. Some of the structures in the district date as early as 1837.
Houses of that age, and the older homes around them, are the ones where original windows are most worth saving. Old-growth timber is denser and more rot-resistant than anything milled today, and a sash that has lasted well over a century usually needs its joints, glazing, paint and hardware put right rather than replacing. That work is described on our window restoration page. Sashes come back to the shop in Marietta, and the openings are closed up and weathertight while they are with us.
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. There is no charge for the visit.
Glass and hardware jobs are usually measured on the first visit and fitted on the second. Rot repairs are often done in place. Full sash restoration happens in the shop.
Nearby
Roswell sits between our shop and the rest of north Fulton. We also work in Alpharetta, Johns Creek, Sandy Springs, Dunwoody and East Cobb, and of course in Marietta itself.
