No doubt about it, some windows in our 1939 house needed replacement. My friend, professional contractor Mike, took a look and said, "Let's head to Home Depot and order you some new ones."
Mike is the kind of guy who moves fast. I am not. I sometimes immerse myself in research for days, weeks, or even years before pulling the trigger on a big purchase like windows. But I've always been inspired by Mike's "Git 'er done" mentality and tried to go with the flow. We walked right into Home Depot, looked at some sample windows, and decided to go with the Tradition Plus double-hung clad windows from Jeld-Wen, complete with tilt-in cleaning and what I'll call "snap-in grilles" to preserve the traditional look of our home.
How many times since then have I wish I'd shopped around a little more.
How many times since then have I wish I'd shopped around a little more.
After the windows arrived, Mike installed them, and–from the moment he showed them to me–he said the "snap-in" grilles gave him trouble. I thought maybe he had just rushed things, or failed to read the directions. But over time I found his skepticism was well-founded.
As the years passed, I found that the main tradition I came to associate with my Tradition Plus windows was dreading my interactions with them.
From the start, it was more than just the windows grilles that caused headaches.
For example, the upper sash can be lowered but is always difficult to raise. Specifically: After you pull the upper sash downward, then attempt to raise it back up, one or both of the small "lifting clips" (not the actual name) in the "window edge channel" (again, not the official "window guy" name), that are apparently intended to hold the sash in a desired position when it's lowered (or raised, in the case of the lower sash), simply don't move with the sash--they are "stuck" in the spot where they were when the window was lowered, and they're not going anywhere even though you lifted the sash and they're supposed to slide up with it and hold it up.
Usually it's just one lifting clip, but the one that moved up with the window--which is attached to some sort of string that provides upward force for the window--doesn't have sufficient holding power by itself to keep the window up by itself, so the sash lists to one side in the window frame, instead of snugging up tightly to the top of the frame.
Through experimentation, I found that pushing the bottom of the top window sash outward in the direction of the outside house wall–hard–while lifting the window up, would somehow "grab" the lifting clips and force them to make the upward journey with the bottom of the window. This, however, is not easy, because–to apply sufficient outward pressure–you basically have to lift the bottom sash up a few inches and tilt it in, and then balance that leaning bottom sash against your chest or belly (or have someone hold it for you) while you push hard against the bottom of the top sash while sliding it up. Quite a workout!
But the truth is that even this annoyance was small–and surmountable through proper technique–compared to the Tradition Plus's diabolical snap-in (aka: "pin in / fall out") window grilles.
As the video below shows, the real problem with the TP window grille is its inherently poor design. The following factors all add up to make a reliable fit of the window grilles in this window an impossibility:
- The clear plastic piece, with the point of a stick pin molded in the end of it, enters the trim around the window sash's frame (Sorry, all you window experts in the audience--I don't have all the exact terms here) at a point where that trim is sloped "uphill" (relative to the surface of the glass), and the pin therefore wants to slide "up the hill."
- By the time the pin reaches the top of the "hill" referred to in the previous step (and hits the tiny ridge at the top of that hill), it can't go very far in, because the clear plastic piece holding the pin has hit its maximum travel position and its plastic body has hit the trim itself. In other words, the pin is just barely long enough to penetrate the ridge at the "top" (again, relative to the surface of the glass) of that sloped trim edge.
- The channel cut into the end of each stick that makes up the grille is too wide for the plastic-with-pin piece that slides in it. This makes it loose and wobbly even if you've forced the pin into the trim as "low on the hill" as possible. Which is difficult, because:
- The pin itself is so thick and bulky that it's difficult to push into wood, even if you could overcome the factors conspiring against you as listed above.
I have enjoyed the tilt-in feature of the Jeld-Wens for ease of window cleaning, but with each grille remove/replace cycle, the grilles seemed to fit worse and fall out more easily. I have pushed, I have prodded, I applied heavy-duty elbow grease to make the pins holding the grilles stay in, but nothing has worked. Some days I come home and find that one of the grilles on the lower sash had simply fallen out on the window stoop, and has only been saved from a trip all the way to the floor by the cafe curtains.
After five years of cursing the darkness of Jeld-Wen's poor entry-level grille design, I decided to take action and contact their customer support department. A polite gentleman, though defensive about the quality of these grilles, sent me a sample of an upgraded style of "full-frame" grilles that truly do snap in. And from the moment I took it out of the packaging and snapped it in, I knew my Jeld-Wen entry-level grille nightmare was nearly over. I plan to someday have these upgraded grilles in every window. And then we can start talking about why the top sash randomly falls down, or lists to one side because those "lifting clips" don't work reliably.
A picture is worth a thousand words, so perhaps a moving picture of Jeld-Wen's "window grilles from the place of eternal torment" will give you pause before you ever order windows without the top-of-the-line snap-in grille option that's offered.
I am sharing this video with the customer support folks I talked to at Jeld-Wen--who politely sent me a sample version of an upgraded window grille which can also be seen in the video. These better grilles are not cheap, and I am hoping Jeld-Wen will see the value in providing some adjustment in price for the remaining replacement grilles, based on what I already paid for the original, flimsy, fall-out grilles.
At this time, the video is hosted as an unlisted video on YouTube. Jeld-Wen's response will write the final chapter of this story on my blog.
I am sharing this video with the customer support folks I talked to at Jeld-Wen--who politely sent me a sample version of an upgraded window grille which can also be seen in the video. These better grilles are not cheap, and I am hoping Jeld-Wen will see the value in providing some adjustment in price for the remaining replacement grilles, based on what I already paid for the original, flimsy, fall-out grilles.
At this time, the video is hosted as an unlisted video on YouTube. Jeld-Wen's response will write the final chapter of this story on my blog.
