About RotGone

A company built on
an unfashionable idea: fix things.

The window and door industry in New Jersey runs on replacement. Showrooms sell products; salesmen are paid on units; and so the answer to a rotted sill, a stripped crank, or a sagging French door is somehow always the same — tear it out, put in new. RotGone was built on the opposite bet: that most of what gets torn out could have been repaired, that homeowners would choose repair if someone honest showed them both numbers, and that a company could thrive doing the harder, smaller, more skilled job.

For 8+ years that bet has held up, house by house, across northern New Jersey. The peeling sash a homeowner was told to replace becomes an afternoon of careful joinery. The "unrepairable" 1990s casement gets its discontinued hardware matched and its wet rail rebuilt. The rotted door frame that anchored a five-figure replacement pitch turns out to need twelve inches of new wood, expertly spliced. Our customers' Google reviews — a 5.0 rating, every review public — tell the same story over and over: they were the only ones who said it could be fixed.

The craft underneath the promise

"Repair first" only works if the repairs last, so the center of this company is craft, not marketing. Our core disciplines are the ones traditional restoration is built on. Epoxy consolidation and rebuilding — penetrating resins that stabilize partially decayed wood, and structural fillers that rebuild missing profiles, stronger than the original fiber. Dutchman repair and splicing — cutting out decay and letting in new matching wood the way it's been done for centuries, so the repair moves with the seasons the way wood should. Around those two sit the supporting trades: sash mechanics, glazing, hardware sourcing for parts the manufacturers gave up on, and finishing that makes the repair disappear. Every job carries our 5-year workmanship warranty, and RotGone is fully insured.

Honest math, in writing

Our estimating rule is simple: you get both numbers. Every written scope shows our repair price next to a realistic replacement figure, so the decision is yours and the math is on the table. When repair genuinely isn't the right answer — rot through a frame's structure, a door past saving — we say so in the same document, and we'll tell you what replacement should cost so you're equipped for that conversation too. A repair company that recommends the occasional replacement is a company you can believe the other 95% of the time. That's the position we've chosen, and it's worth more to us than any single job.

Where we work

We're based at 551 Bloomfield Ave, West Caldwell, NJ 07006 — a real shop in West Caldwell, not a call center — and we work throughout Essex, Morris, and Union counties and the surrounding towns of northern New Jersey: Montclair, Glen Ridge, Maplewood, Millburn, South Orange, Livingston, Caldwell, and Verona; Chatham, Madison, and Morristown; Summit, Westfield, and Cranford — plus nearby communities like Ridgewood and Wayne. Old housing stock is our natural habitat: the pre-war double-hungs, the mid-century casements, the porches and sunrooms that make these towns worth living in.

Who does the work

Our craftsmen are wood people — trained in the epoxy and joinery methods above, equipped for both shop and onsite work, and backed by the company's insurance and warranty on every visit. We keep the crew standard high the same way we keep the craft standard high: carefully, and in person. Office hours are Mon–Fri 8:00 AM – 6:00 PM; the fastest way to reach the crew's judgment, though, is a photo of your problem texted to (973) 564-0958 — you'll have an answer the same day.