How window replacement actually works, from survey to fitting

Stage one: a price you can look at without commitment.

The old-fashioned route starts with a salesperson on your sofa. Ours starts online: our quote tool prices windows and doors from your measurements and choices, so you can see realistic numbers before anyone visits. Rough measurements are fine at this stage. Pricing works from approximate sizes, and nothing is manufactured from them.

This is the stage for comparing styles and materials against your budget: casement against flush casement, uPVC against aluminium, colour against cost. Change your mind freely; it costs nothing here.

Stage two: the technical survey.

Once you want to go ahead, a surveyor measures every opening properly. This is the stage that makes made-to-measure mean something: brick-to-brick sizes, squareness, sill depths, reveal condition, trickle vent requirements and how each window opens and in which direction.

The survey is also where practical details get agreed rather than assumed: which rooms need obscure glass, where fire escape openings are required, how the existing sills and plaster will be treated. Everything the fitters do later is built from this document, so a careful survey is what a tidy fitting day looks like in advance.

Stage three: manufacture.

Your windows are then made to those measurements. Made-to-order is why replacement windows are not an off-the-shelf, next-day product, and why the survey has to be right. We confirm the expected timescale when the order is placed rather than quoting a number here, because it varies by product, colour and time of year, and we would rather tell you the true figure than a marketing one.

Stage four: fitting day.

Fitting runs room by room: the old window comes out, the opening is cleaned up, the new frame goes in, gets fixed, sealed, and the room is closed off again before the next one is opened. Your house is not left open to the weather. Each opening is out and refilled the same day.

Expect some dust and noise around each window for the hour or so it is being worked on, and clear a working space in front of each one before the team arrives. At the end, every window should open, close and lock smoothly, with the trims and sealant finished, and the old frames and glass leave with the fitters.

What decides whether the job goes well.

Almost everything that goes wrong in window replacement traces back to skipped steps early on: prices produced without honest sizes, surveys done in a hurry, details assumed rather than asked. The stages above are boring on purpose. Boring is what you want from the people replacing the holes in your walls.