Nice pics Sheila. Just for the reference of others, most premium vinyl lines do offer exterior colors including custom matching available with white interiors. @llyom, regarding the looks of the Integrity, part of it is that it is SOOO slim lined that it can turn some people off. Additionally, the hardware (locks, tilt latches , etc) do not have the look or feel of a high end unit--kind of cheap to be quite frank. That said, it is a solid unit (nothing that Marvin makes is bad IMO), it just does not offer anything that a premium vinyl unit will not offer, and in fact it falls short in performance. I like the Integrity line in general, I primarily recommend it however when homeowners desire a real wood interior and are willing to sacrifice some performance. --and btw, Sheila, I do agree with your decision. I'd have recommended the same thing (re: all ultrex in areas that you are not concerned about the wood interior).

I would use Azek for the exterior flat casing. In the past I probably would have recommended the 200 series over the All Ultrex and Simonton but as I am not as familiar with Andersen any longer and there new products (or renamed Builders Select or whatever the 200 actually is) I really cannot be certain. While not the prettiest girl at the dance I would be inclined to lean towards the Ultrex today were it me. As far as the slider if I remember correctly you had a fairly large wall area and I would look seriously at a 12' wide door.

Call me old-fashioned but if I planned to live in a house for 20 years and wanted a dark color, I would not be considering PVC windows. A dark color must be factory painted on the extruded PVC and the PVC must remain flexible for 20 years which requires expensive plasticizers therefore, IMO any competitively priced dark colored PVC window is likely to eventually fade, become brittle and crack. I confess the absence of cross sections and any description of how the windows are made turned me off of Sunrise. The web site did reveal that the sill slope is 5 degrees. The sill slope of an Andersen 400 and Marvin Integrity is about 15 degrees so it would be unwise to not add a cellular PVC sub-sill under the Sunrise window to avoid water penetration. Also, I am not impressed by the "lifetime" warranty. Labor is not included so if a window frame cracked while the window company was still in business (Sunrise is 20 years old; Marvin is 100 years old), you would only get a replacement window shipped to you. There is no way to take all risk out of buying windows but considering the high expense of building a house, the lowest quality I would consider is the Marvin Integrity Wood-Ultrix window or the Andersen Eagle aluminum clad window. I believe there are other more effective places to reduce costs in building a house. Good luck with it.

I have no experience with Marvin, but we are mid-build and just got our Kolbe order a couple weeks ago. We got VistaLuxe for most of our windows, but got Forgent in any wet rooms and I have to say they look and feel amaaaazing. Like, we both commented we could have easily gone with the Forgent all over the house and been plenty happy. We happened to have wanted a wood finish, but had we wanted black interiors we would have been pleased as punch. They are sleek, they feel good to the touch, solid, sexy even. Our builders have worked with top of the line windows, by they way, and they were gushing about these windows, as well—, beauty, quality, and ease of installation. So I can at least give you that firsthand positive reaction. Haven’t lived with them yet, but they are beautiful and our trades folks give them the thumbs up.