Whether it is one sliding door or every opening in the house, here is what moves the number, so you can read any quote you are handed and know what you are looking at.
We went back through several hundred finished projects here in the valley. Not estimates. Inspected, signed-off work.
An average would describe almost none of our customers, and it always lands low, which is not an accident. A low number gets the appointment. The real number turns up in your living room around hour two, once the folder comes out and the discount clock starts ticking.
Take one category, plain like-for-like retrofit. The distance between the smallest job in it and the largest is not measured in percentages. It is measured in orders of magnitude.Same category. Same crews. Same valley. That is why a published average tells you nothing.
This is the choice most quotes never explain, and it changes both the look and the price. Look at the first two photographs side by side. That band of frame around the glass is the whole difference.
Flush fin or Z-bar
The new window laps over the frame already in your wall and seals against it. Notice the flat band running around the glass. That is the fin.
New construction look
The old frame comes out completely. Stucco is cut back, paper and flashing rebuilt, then patched and textured so it returns straight to the frame. No band, no fin.
Often an HOA requirement
Raised stucco surrounds built out around each opening, either because your community requires them or because you want the look.
The same questions we ask standing in your kitchen. No price at the end, because we still have not seen your house. But you will see exactly what adds to it.
1. What are you replacing?
2. How should it go in?
3. Keep the openings the same size?
4. Frame and glass
5. Opening up a wall for glass?
Nothing is sent anywhere. This only changes what you see on this page.
Your project so far
Sized against each other, since we will not price them for you.
Smallest thing we do
Usually a single day, and a perfectly normal thing to call us about. An entry door the sun finally finished off, or a patio slider gone heavy with grit.
The common one, by a wide margin
Usually the west and south sides, where the sun does its damage. Most finish in one to two days.
Twenty openings and up
Longest schedule, most trades, most permitting. Lowest cost per window, highest total, which surprises people.
Ask all five of every bidder. Including us.
Stock sizes need filler strips and fatter frames to swallow the difference, and you lose glass and view permanently to hide a manufacturing shortcut. We build every unit to the measured opening. Look at the two side by side before you sign anything.
Do not let anyone talk you out of this one. Unpermitted work sits quietly in your file until the day you sell, then stalls escrow. It also hands an insurance adjuster a reason to look sideways at a claim.
Expect the permit fee to sit outside the contract price rather than inside it. The jurisdiction sets it only after we submit the scope and the details, so nobody can name that number the day they hand you a quote. Once the invoice comes, you can pay the city or county directly, or pay us and we pay them on your behalf. Either way you are looking at the real fee, not a padded allowance. CSLB 906636, if you would like to look us up.
This one decides what your stucco goes through. A retrofit seals over the existing frame and nothing gets cut. A full-frame install means the stucco is cut back, the paper and flashing rebuilt, then patched and textured to match. Both are proper ways to do it, and they do not cost the same. Ask each bidder which one they have quoted, and who is responsible for the patch when they are done.
Plenty of window companies are sales offices that hand the work to whoever is free that week. Every installer who sets foot on your property is on our payroll and answerable to us on the warranty.
Your old windows and all the packaging hauled away, leftover materials cleared out, and the work area swept and put back the way we found it. Ask who handles the HOA submittal too, because that one quietly goes missing between the estimate and the invoice.
The Palm Desert showroom has full-size working displays you can slide, latch and lean on.
When we do come out, you get a written quote you can hold beside anything else you have collected. No folder of discounts expiring at sundown.
Family owned in Palm Desert since 1986. Milgard Platinum Dealer, CSLB 906636, and our own crews on every job from Palm Springs to Indio.
