Window and door repair in Vinings, Georgia
Vinings is unusual among the places we work because its housing is not dominated by one boom. Census Bureau estimates spread it fairly evenly: roughly a third of homes from the 1970s and 1980s, about a third from the 1990s and 2000s, and about a quarter from 2010 on. The median home was built in 1996. Almost nothing dates from before 1950.
So a Vinings street can have a forty-five-year-old house with wood windows next to a five-year-old townhouse with vinyl, and they need completely different things. We work out of our shop in Marietta, close by, and see both.
Houses from the 1970s and 1980s
These are the houses most likely to still have wood or wood-clad windows and original doors, and the usual problem is water. Our rain finds every gap in a sill, every split in old paint and every failed bead of caulk, and the wood behind it softens. Most of the time it is the bottom rail of the sash, the sill, or the bottom of a door jamb.
Early rot can be cut out and rebuilt with new wood or epoxy, then primed and painted, and the window carries on. That is a far cheaper job than replacement. See wood rot repair.
Original single-glazed wood sash, where it survives, is often worth restoring: new glazing, reworked joints, new weatherstrip. Our window restoration page explains it.
Old hardware on casements and double-hungs of this age can still usually be matched or substituted. See window hardware repair.
Houses from the 1990s on
Here the common failure is the glass. The insulated units in these windows rely on an edge seal that our heat and humidity wear down, and when it fails the window fogs between the panes. The fix is a new glass unit in the existing sash, and the window itself, which is usually perfectly sound, stays where it is. Our foggy glass page has the detail.
Doors in these homes, including the French and sliding patio doors that open onto decks and terraces, wear at the rollers, hinges, weatherstrip and glass. We repair them, and where the glass panel has fogged or cracked, see door glass repair.
A short history
Around 1830 Hardy Pace ran a ferry across the Chattahoochee, and the settlement was called Paces after him. Paces Ferry Road still runs through it. In the 1840s the Western and Atlantic Railroad used the place as a construction station, and the name Vinings came from William H. Vining, who worked on the railroad bridge. In 1864 Union troops occupied the area, and Hardy Pace’s house was lost. His son Solomon built a new house between 1865 and 1874, and that Pace House now belongs to the Vinings Historic Preservation Society, which acquired it in 1994.
Beside it stands the Old Pavilion, built as an open-air structure by the railroad in 1874 for Atlantans who came out by train for dining and dancing. In the 1940s its owner, Earle Carter Smith, added walls and windows, and in 1996 local groups paid to move it two blocks rather than see it demolished. Vinings was officially recognized as a community in 1904. It has never incorporated and is governed by the Cobb County commission.
Repair or replace
We install new windows and doors, and we will recommend them when the frame is gone or the product is not worth saving. Otherwise we fix the part that failed. If you would like to think it through before we come out, read repair or replace or take the quiz.
What a visit looks like
Someone visits, looks at each window and door you point out, and checks the sills and jambs for soft wood while they are at it. You get a written estimate with the urgent items separated from the ones that can wait. 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 at our Marietta shop, with the openings closed up and weathertight while the sash is away.
Nearby
We also work in Smyrna, Marietta, East Cobb, Buckhead and Sandy Springs.
