Window Contractor in Sehome, Bellingham WA

Windows for Sehome's Old Houses

Wedged between downtown Bellingham, the WWU campus, and the wooded ridge of the Sehome Hill Arboretum, the Sehome neighborhood is a showcase of early-twentieth-century housing — tall craftsman homes and boxy foursquares climbing the hillside streets, many still wearing their original single-pane wood sash windows. Those windows have charm and a century of history. They also leak heat like screen doors, rattle in every bay wind, and sweat condensation onto sills all winter. Alpine Exteriors replaces them in a way that keeps the house looking like itself.

That last part matters in Sehome. A 1915 foursquare with chunky white vinyl sliders punched into its facade loses something real — in appearance and in value. So we match what the house is asking for: correct grid patterns, exterior trim rebuilt to the original profiles, and double-hung styles where double-hungs belong.

Two Honest Paths: Insert or Full-Frame

Old-house window projects come down to one fork in the road, and we walk you through it on site:

• Insert replacements — new energy-efficient units set within the existing frames, preserving original interior and exterior trim at a lower cost
• Full-frame replacement — everything comes out to the studs, right for openings with rot, sagging frames, or decades of paint-swollen jambs
• Rot and flashing repair — hillside homes shed a lot of water past their windows, and we rebuild what previous decades let decay
• Sound-reducing glass options — worth considering near the busier streets bordering campus and the Samish Way corridor

Inserts only make sense when the existing frames are square and sound, which on Sehome's steep, wet hillside is genuinely a coin flip — so we probe every opening before recommending anything. Guessing wrong on this is how homeowners pay twice.

Comfort You Will Notice by the First Cold Snap

Modern low-E, argon-filled glass changes daily life in an old house: rooms hold their heat, the furnace cycles less, street noise drops, and winter condensation — the slow killer of old sills and plaster — largely disappears. For owners who rent to students, new windows also mean fewer maintenance calls and tenants who can actually keep the place warm.

Alpine Exteriors has been working on northwest Washington homes for 25 years, and a large share of our 2,000-plus completed projects have been in Bellingham's historic neighborhoods — Sehome, South Hill, York, Columbia. We know these housing types down to the framing quirks. Our installation labor is covered by a 25-year workmanship warranty, so the flashing and sealing behind your new windows is guaranteed for the long haul, not just past the invoice date.

If your sash cords are cut, your storm windows are doing all the work, or you are simply done scraping ice off the inside of the glass, schedule a free on-site estimate. We will assess every opening, price both the insert and full-frame paths where both are viable, and let you choose with clear numbers.