Rotten Wood Repair in Charlotte, NC

A wood window has a few parts worth knowing by name, because that's where the trouble starts. The sash is the movable panel that holds the glass. The sill is the sloped piece outside, under the window, that sheds rain away from the house.

Paint is the only armor. Bare wood drinks water like a sponge. As long as the paint is whole, rain runs off. Once it cracks or peels, every rain soaks straight into the wood. The worst spots are the flat ones: the bottom rail of the sash and the sill, where water sits instead of running off. In Charlotte's humid summers that wood barely dries out between storms. Wet wood is food for fungus, and the fungus turns it soft from the inside long before you see a hole.

Most of the window is still good. As you just saw, the rot doesn't take the whole window. The top sash, the glass and most of the frame stay solid. Only the bottom rots, where water sits. That's why we developed a way to restore the window instead of replacing it: we cut out only the rotted wood and splice in new wood milled to the original profile, so the repair disappears under paint. The whole window stays, original and working, and the homeowner saves a lot of money: a rebuilt sash from $375 or a sill from $475, against about $2,000 for a new wood window.

Aluminum-clad windows rot where you can't see it. On many newer windows the outside of the wood is wrapped in aluminum, so it looks like there's nothing left to rot. But the aluminum is sealed to the glass with silicone, and that silicone often lets go. When it does, rain runs straight in between the glass and the aluminum, down onto the wood underneath. It collects in the pocket between the aluminum and the wood and fills it up like a bathtub, the same way the desiccant fills up inside a foggy glass unit. The aluminum keeps the water in and keeps the air out, so it never dries. From outside the window looks perfect. Underneath, the wood is going soft.

How to check your own windows:

• Press a screwdriver into the bottom corners of the sash and the sill. Solid, healthy wood stops it; rotted wood lets it sink in.
• Look for paint that's cracked, peeling or bubbling on the flat parts, and dark stains around it.
• On clad windows, look at the silicone where the aluminum meets the glass. A gap, or a bead that has pulled away, means water is getting in.

What we do. We cut the rot out down to solid, healthy wood and splice in new wood milled to the original profile, from $375 per sash and $475 per sill. Small, early spots can be consolidated with epoxy once the loose decay is out. Then the repair is finished and sealed so the paint can do its job again.