Wood Window Repair Services

"Everyone else — including Pella —
recommended replacement."

That line comes from a 5-star verified Google review of our work: "I called multiple contractors and companies. They were the only ones who said they could fix my broken Pella casement window from the 1990s. Everyone else — including Pella — recommended replacement." Read it again, because it describes the entire wood window market in one sentence. When even the manufacturer's answer to a thirty-year-old casement is a new casement, the problem isn't your window. It's that almost nobody left in New Jersey practices wood window repair as a trade. We do — it's the whole business.

The repair-shop view of a wood window is different from the salesman's view. A salesman sees a unit: works or doesn't, keep or swap. We see a system of four subsystems — frame, sash, glazing, hardware — each of which fails independently and each of which can be repaired independently. A casement that won't close usually has a worn crank or a swollen rail, not a terminal illness. A drafty double-hung usually needs weatherstripping and a reglaze, not $2,000 of new vinyl. Repair wooden windows at the component level and the "replace everything" conversation collapses, because it was never about the whole window to begin with.

Brand experience that changes the diagnosis

Modern wood windows are not generic, and repairing them well means knowing their quirks. Marvin units are joinery-heavy and hugely worth saving, but their clad-wood transitions hide moisture that shows up as sill rot years later. Pella casements and double-hungs from the '80s and '90s are solid wood under aluminum or roll-screen systems whose hardware went obsolete — the wood outlives the parts catalog, and we bridge that gap with adapted and specialist-sourced hardware. Andersen lines like Narroline and 400 Series fail at balances, sash cords, and glazing gaskets long before the wood does. Knowing which failure belongs to which brand is why our first visit usually ends in a fix, not a proposal for new windows.

Pre-war windows: the strongest case for repair

Then there are the windows with no brand at all — the originals in the 1900s–1930s housing stock of Glen Ridge, Montclair, and Maplewood. These are the windows we'd argue hardest to save, for reasons past sentiment. They're built from old-growth wood dense enough that ninety NJ winters often leave nothing worse than a rotted sill corner. Their joinery was cut to be serviced — sashes come out, parting beads pry free, every part is accessible in a way no modern welded unit is. Wooden window restoration on these houses means consolidating or splicing the rot, renewing glazing putty around the original wavy glass, re-cording the weights, and weatherstripping the meeting rails. The window that comes back works smoothly, seals honestly, and still belongs to the house — something no catalog replacement can claim in a pre-war facade.

The arithmetic under all of it

A full wood-window replacement project runs $23,000 and up, and resale data consistently shows that spend returning a loss. Component-level repair across the same house typically costs about 80% less — and it's backed here by a 5-year workmanship warranty, a fully insured crew, and a 5.0 Google rating earned one saved window at a time. Photo answers come the same day; assessments happen within 1–2 days; nearly all repairs finish within 1–2 weeks.

Wood window repair service for Glen Ridge, Montclair, Maplewood, Essex Fells & all of northern NJ · West Caldwell HQ · Mon–Fri 8:00 AM – 6:00 PM · (973) 564-0958

The frame is the fixed structure in the wall — jambs, head, and sill. It fails by rot at the lower joints, and we rebuild it in place with epoxy consolidation or dutchman splicing of matching wood. The sash is the moving part holding the glass; its rails and stiles rot at the joints, its corners rack loose, and its cords or balances snap — all repairable, in place or in our shop, including full element replication when a section is beyond saving.

The glazing — glass plus the putty or stops that hold it — cracks, hazes, and lets water reach the wood beneath; we reglaze with proper bedding so the sash sheds water again. The hardware — locks, lifts, hinges, cranks, balances — seizes and strips with age; we free, adapt, or source replacements even for long-discontinued lines. Treating these four as one system is why our repairs stick: a rebuilt sill under a leaking glazing line would just rot again, so we fix the cause and the casualty together.