Window replacement in southern Maine is all we do, Kittery to Brunswick, and that includes entry doors and patio doors. If you can feel the wind with the sash locked, that window retired years ago, and we will tell you straight whether an insert will do or the frame has to go.
Homeowners hire a windows-and-doors-only company because the opening decides whether a new window lasts. A new window in a rotten opening is an expensive draft.
Frames checked for square and sills for rot, from York Village colonials to Portland Victorians
Sill pans and lapped flashing tape, so wind-driven rain off the coast drains back out
A written price naming insert or full-frame for each opening, with any town permit pulled by us
Every town we serve
The kind of window replacement your house needs depends on its age and exposure far more than on a brochure.
Portland's peninsula Victorians and Biddeford's mill-era triple-deckers often have tall double-hungs set in old plaster walls. We pry the interior trim off by hand so the plaster stays whole.
In Portland's historic districts, a window change visible from the street needs a Certificate of Appropriateness first, and the city's Historic Preservation Board page lays out that review.
From Shore Road in Cape Elizabeth down to Kittery Point, coastal rain rarely falls straight down. It comes in sideways, so the sill pan and flashing matter as much as the glass.
Salt is hard on bare wood, so on ocean-facing walls we recommend fiberglass, or wood-clad for wood inside.
Inland, from Gray to Sanford, the frost runs deeper and the heating season longer, so the glass matters more. Low-E coatings and gas fill are standard upgrades, and a lower U-factor on the NFRC label means less heat lost.
Turning a Sebago Lake camp into a year-round house is the moment to go full-frame and insulate each opening for January.
The window and door services we offer in southern Maine run from one fogged window to the whole house.
Window work on a pre-1978 house disturbs paint that may contain lead, and the EPA's lead-safe renovation rule sets how that work is done.
We work each sash, check each frame for square and press on the sills, then write a price naming insert or full-frame for each window.
Once the price and any permit are set, we pull one old unit, fix what it was hiding, shim the new window square, and seal that opening before the next.
You test every new window and door with us and check the trim, then we haul the old units away.
Matt Libby
Owner, Southern Maine Window Replacement · Saco, Maine
The person who looks at your openings is the person responsible for the job.
Matt Libby started out framing houses and building additions around Saco and Biddeford in 1988. The part of the job he never trusted anyone else with was the openings: the sill, the flashing, the way a window ties into the wall around it.
On older houses from Kittery to Brunswick he kept pulling out windows that had been stuffed with foam and caulked shut, and finding rot under the sill every time. In 2007 he narrowed the work to windows and doors, and it has been the whole job since.
Matt still walks every house before it is priced. He checks each frame for square, pokes the sills, and tells homeowners straight when an insert is enough and when the opening needs to come out to the studs.
Maine does not license general contractors, so there is no license to show you. What you get instead is a written price before the old windows come out and a phone number that gets answered.
More about Matt
You choose window replacement in southern Maine by asking how each opening will be handled, since any company can order the same window. Two quotes that both say "vinyl double-hung" can be two very different jobs.
Ask whether each unit is an insert or full-frame, whether a sill pan goes in, and how the flashing laps into the wall. Ask about the foam too: it should be low-expansion, because too much bows the frame and binds the sash.
Maine does not license general contractors, so those answers are the real credential. Once the install is settled, ENERGY STAR is a fair yardstick for the glass.
The southern Maine homeowners who need new windows usually see fog between the panes, sash that will not stay up, or sills soft under a thumb. Fog means the glass seal failed, and caulk will not fix that.
Windows in a southern Maine house fail first where the weather hits hardest: the water side on the coast, and under the eaves inland, where ice dams push meltwater behind old flashing and soften the headers.
You can replace windows in southern Maine in any month, since each opening is sealed before the next comes out. New painted exterior trim may wait for warm weeks so the paint cures.
Window replacement in southern Maine averages $5,000 to $15,000 for one to five windows and $28,000 to $65,000 for a whole house. Those figures average many quotes across the region, so read them as a planning range, never a quote.
| Project | What it covers | Average range | Time on site |
|---|---|---|---|
| A few windows | 1 to 5 openings | $5,000 to $15,000 | 1 to 3 days |
| Several windows | 6 to 10 openings | $12,000 to $30,000 | 3 to 7 days |
| The whole house | 15 to 25 openings | $28,000 to $65,000 | 1 to 3 weeks |
Installed averages: removal, installation, flashing, interior and exterior trim, and haul-away.
A new entry door in southern Maine runs about $3,500 to $12,000 installed, on average. A slab swap into a sound frame sits low, while sidelights, a transom or a rotted threshold push the price up.
Patio sliders and French doors average $5,000 to $16,000 across the region's quotes. Opening width, any header change and how the sill meets the deck set where a door job lands.
Insert versus full-frame moves a window price the most, because full-frame goes back to the rough framing. Material, style and hidden rot come next, with wood-clad costing more than vinyl.
You get a written price on new windows by sending the free estimate request, which takes about a minute. We visit, look at every opening on your list, and put the number in writing before anything is scheduled.
