Most of Scarborough was built in one long stretch between the early sixties and the late seventies. Bungalows, back splits and two storeys, street after street of them, and once you have done this long enough you can read the year off a house from the driveway.

The window I see more than any other out here

The big aluminum horizontal slider. Wide, low, usually in the living room and across the bedrooms. When they went in they were fine for the time. Fifty years later the rollers are finished, the track is packed with grit, and the aluminum frame is pulling cold straight into the room. Half of them do not lock properly anymore either, and people stop noticing because they have lived with it so long.

If you are near the Bluffs

Along the Bluffs and the lake you have wind on top of everything else. Wind does not just make a room cold, it drives water into any gap in the install. That is where a bad seal shows up fast. On those exposures I pay more attention to how the outside is finished than almost anything else.

The other common one

Sliding patio doors off the back onto a deck. Original ones from that era are heavy, off track, and usually the single biggest draft in the whole house. People put a blanket at the bottom in January. You should not have to do that.

Areas I cover in Scarborough

Agincourt, Guildwood, West Hill, Birch Cliff, Cliffside, Wexford, Malvern, Highland Creek, Bendale, Woburn and Rouge.

Straight talk on cost

A lot of homes here have eight to twelve windows and doing them all at once is real money. You do not have to. I would rather do your worst four properly this year than stretch you thin doing everything badly. The product matters, but the installation is what really makes the difference long term, and that is true whether you do four or fourteen.