Replacement Windows for a Boulder Sun Room
We solve window and door challenges
We occasionally advise owners and contractors faced with window and door challenges on their projects. This leads to our supplying the project with products specified to remove the challenges, and our involvement aiding those tasked with installing them.
This is one of those projects.
The homeowners have loved their home, and nurtured the setting around it, since they built it in the 1970’s. The house reflects the owners and their changing lifestyles – it served them well as the home in which their children were raised, and now as a comfortable retreat to which to return from world travels.
Three things were remarkable about this project for us.
- First, we were asked to participate by a general contractor who has worked for the couple before, and who knew their needs and wants well, having performed major structural work and construction of a spectacular kitchen (with eucalyptus cabinets!) just a few years ago;
- Second, the sunspace is north-facing;
- Third, it is surrounded by a jungle of fabulous trees and plants which cradle it in a forest-like atmosphere. So dense is the foliage, the space is nearly impossible to see from nearby roadways.
Asked to recommend ways that glazing could protect the space, insulate what had been only a summer-season room, add ventilation, not color the view from inside of the surrounding exterior environment, contribute no contradictions to the intimacy of the wood space and exterior, and preserve the existing aesthetic of simple timber-frame construction, we had a full plate in front of us.
The toughest issue was preserving the look of single-pane fixed windows with tiny perimeter wood stops while introducing ventilating windows. After evaluating windows from four manufacturers, we selected one that would meet all requirements, but that would require an expensive change order for the extra interior trim work needed to tie the ventilating and fixed units together. A four and 9/16ths inch thick jamb was simply too much for the slim walls of this sun porch.
Communication is the key to success in every cooperative endeavor, right?
Realizing that an aluminum-cladded wood window option was available that would fit the wall depth beautifully, we proposed a modification to the original specification of only bare wood window exteriors, and suggested that this new option, in a bronze-clad exterior, would be unlikely to be seen often due to the proximity of the plantings, yet would fit well and allow the work to proceed without the change order.
We convinced all the parties that a 3 ¼” jamb Marvin Ultimate Replacement Casement window of Douglas fir would fit perfectly.
This window has wonderful features, including disconnecting hardware that allows the sash to push open fully, then be pulled around by the hinge stile to a position exposing the exterior side of the glass to the interior for astoundingly easy cleaning.
We also supplied the insulated glass sections for the fixed openings, and materials and tools to install them. The shapes included rectangles, trapezoids, a triangle, and a peaked pentagon. All glazing, in the fixed and Marvin windows, is Cardinal LoE2 272, with very high light transmission qualities.
The contractor did a marvelous job stopping-in these pieces, and sight lines appear perfect in each section. Notable as well is their work on the two swinging doors in the room. These original doors are of rare solid wood construction, and they were reworked and refinished, with the exterior door receiving its own insulated glazing element.
General Contractor: A New Day Remodeling, Boulder, CO – Daniel Tognetti, President
