When it comes to home maintenance, few decisions are as tricky as knowing whether to repair or replace your windows. In this conversation, Scott Dorrell shares honest insights based on years of experience, helping homeowners understand when a full window replacement is truly worth it—and when a simple repair will do the trick.

Transcript starts here:

Interviewer (Andrew Curtis)
Repair versus replace.

Interviewee (Scott Dorrell, Co-Founder of Modern Day Window & Door)
I get a lot of phone calls from customers all the time asking, “Hey, I want to replace my windows,” and after talking to them on the phone, I often end up directing them somewhere else just to get some repair work done. Because replacement is not always the right choice for a consumer.

We only want to replace windows in homes where that’s the right thing to do. I think the biggest difference between repair and replace is that when you repair a window, that’s an expense. When you replace a window, that’s an investment. You’re going to see savings from the new windows on your energy bills, you’re going to extend the life of your furnace and air conditioner, preserve the materials inside your home from fading, and you’re going to increase the value of your home.

If you plan on staying in your house for any length of time—I'd say about three to five years at minimum—then you should really consider doing a replacement project. But if you plan on selling the house, you need to get it ready to put on the market, and you're worried about the inspectors saying, “Hey, this glass pack is foggy,” then there's a really big argument that maybe you should repair that window and go on about your way and let the next homeowner make the investment.

Also, if you have just a broken pack of glass in your home, that doesn’t mean the window’s bad. You can call another company that could potentially come out and just put new glass in the window. The frame is fine, you’re good to go. You don’t have to worry about the windows matching—you just fix that pack of glass.