2011.07.04 - Windows & Doors

We finally got doors & windows installed (minus the front door). Rachel & I went to several places to look at windows and door options, took prices and looked at features. We timed it perfectly and got high quality product at Home Depot for a significant discount, and so we chose them. The doors and windows were delivered and that's when we discovered that the beautiful front door was damaged. It wasn't damaged on delivery, as we saw the guy bring it off the truck with the fork lift. Nothing he did would've caused this. It was likely caused either during shipping or else at the factory. Regardless, we weren't going to pay for a bad door.
Nearly a week later, nothing had been done by Home Depot and they weren't returning our calls or doing anything about it. That was frustrating.
One of Rachel's co-workers' husband works for Home Depot so he came out and inspected. Normally, he doesn't do that, but he did it for us. He took photographs of the damage. However, after that, we couldn't get any involvement from the store management. This was terribly frustrating.
However, after we started bugging them, I think one of the assistant managers finally got involved and realized that there was a problem.
However, the store manager insulted Rachel (practically) by telling her that he'd give her a $200 discount on the door and was willing to "sell" her some stain for the door at a discount.
Give me a break. The door had a distressed finish, but "come on". Offering to sell us stain was an insult.
So we told them to come get the door. They ordered a new door to replace that one and we're waiting for that.
In the meantime, we contracted with a guy to come out and install the windows and doors. I took off work and was home to help him. We also got help from our son when I got tired of carrying the windows. The double windows were pretty heavy, as were the french doors.

They're all installed. I took a few photographs. We're pretty happy with the quality, and the assistant manager at Home Depot made things right, so we have no complaints with them. We're just waiting on the front door and some screen replacements for the french doors.